enormous ice pack persisted through January 2022 when it suddenly broke-up over the course of a few days, "taking with it a Philadelphia-sized piece of the Scar Inlet Ice Shelf," according to NASA scientists examining images from the Terra and Aqua satellites. Larsen C , Larsen C was the fourth largest ice shelf in Antarctica, with an area of about . Satellite radar altimeter measurements show that between 1992 and 2001, the Larsen Ice Shelf thinned by up to 0.27 ± 0.11 meters per year. In 2004, a report concluded that although the remaining Larsen C region appeared to be relatively stable, continued warming could lead to its breakup within the following decade. The breakaway process for the iceberg had begun by mid-2016. On 10 November 2016 scientists photographed the growing rift running along the Larsen C ice shelf, showing it running about long with a width of more than , and a depth of . By December 2016, the rift had extended another to the point where only of unbroken ice remained and calving was considered to be a certainty in 2017. This was predicted to cause the calving of between nine and twelve percent of the ice shelf, , an area greater than the US state of Delaware, or twice the size of Luxembourg. The calved fragment was predicted to be thick and to have an area of about . The resulting iceberg was predicted to be among the largest icebergs ever recorded, unless it would break into multiple pieces. On 1 May 2017 members of MIDAS reported that satellite images showed a new crack, around long, branching off the main crack approximately behind the previous tip, heading toward the ice front. Scientists with Swansea University in the UK say the crack lengthened from 25 May to 31 May, and that less than of ice is all that prevents the birth of an enormous iceberg. "The rift tip appears also to have turned significantly towards the ice front, indicating that the time of calving is probably very close," Adrian Luckman and Martin O'Leary wrote on Wednesday in a blog post for the Impact of Melt on Ice Shelf Dynamics and Stability project, or MIDAS. "There appears to be very little to prevent the iceberg from breaking away completely." The larger swath of the Larsen C ice shelf that sat behind the calved iceberg "will be less stable than