Watch as the massive iceberg B-22 breaks free from the sea floor and drifts into the South Pacific Ocean. Roughly twice the size of Houston, TX, this massive, 3,000 Km² iceberg broke free from the Thwaites Glacier in March 2002 and promptly stuck to the sea floor. One of the longest lived icebergs in recorded history, B-22 remained in place off the coast of Antarctica for more than a decade. Finally, around September 2022 the enormous piece of ice began to move again, and in early 2023 drifted off into the open ocean.
Colorized radar imagery obtained from the Sentinel-1 satellite, and processed using Google Earth Engine (GEE).
An interactive GEE dashboard app is included below. Due to the large number of images and the spatial extent of the study are, the app may take a while to load. For optimal results, please wait until all layers are finished loading (see layers menu in top right). Thank you for your patience.
Additional information, including GEE JavaScript code, can be found here.