West Antarctic Ice Sheet release new iceberg

In October 2001, Eos published an article describing the sudden formation last year of a large fracture across most of the floating tongue of Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica (75°S latitude, 102°W longitude) [ Bindschadler and Rignot , 2001]. Early last November, the growing fracture completely severed the ice tongue, releasing an iceberg 42 km×17 km, roughly the size of the Caribbean island of Dominica. What makes this event notable is the insight into the process of iceberg formation made possible by the unprecedented series of image data captured by the Multi‐angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument in the days just before the calving.