Predicting the movements of a giant GPS-tagged iceberg

An iceberg from the Pine Island Glacier is about to receive a lot of attention.

Flickr user: NASA Ice

A team of Earth systems scientists from the UK has been awarded an emergency £50,000 ($80,555) grant to track and predict the movements of a massive iceberg measuring 700 sq km (270 sq miles) that could be floating perilously in the direction of major shipping lanes.

The iceberg was part of the Pine Island Glacier, a large ice stream flowing into the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. NASA first spotted a crack in the glacier that looked like the start of a giant berg in 2011, but it was not until July this year that it became clear that crack went all the way through.

"The iceberg remained attached to the glacier for four months [after this] because it had been winter in the southern hemisphere and the iceberg is likely to have been frozen against the glacier," Grant Bigg, a professor at the University of Sheffield leading the study, told Wired.co.uk. "We expected it to break-away but did not know when this would occur. From satellite images you couldn't see much evidence of the split widening until November 11."