File:Remnants of Iceberg A-76 off South Georgia Island (MODIS).jpg

English: Shard-like remnants of what was once massive Iceberg A-76 were shrouded under cloud around South Georgia Island on June 30, 2023, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of the region.

When A-76 first calved from Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf in May 2021, it was the largest iceberg on the planet. Initially similar in area as the U.S. state of Rhode Island, the giant berg quickly split into three smaller pieces. The largest of those pieces was a rectangular-shaped tabular iceberg which was named A-76A.

For the last two years, A-76A has been drifting slowly northward, and has recently begun to break apart in the relatively warm waters near South Georgia Island. In April 2023, the U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC) reported that a large chunk of ice had split off of A-76A, and gave the new chunk the name Iceberg A-76D. By mid-March, additional breaks in A-76A had resulted in the formation of four more new icebergs, which were dubbed A-76E, A-76F, A-76G, A-76H, and A-76I. In late May, A-76F broke apart to create A-76J while A-76A split into A-76K and A-76L. In early June, A-76A split once again, giving rise to A-76M. Of the thirteen icebergs that were once part of the massive A-76, the USNIC is still tracking all except A-76I which broke up and became too small to track on May 16.

In this image, six named fragments of what was once A-76 are visible floating near South Georgia Island. To the east are A-76A, A-7F, A-76H, A-76L, and A-76M while A-76K sits off the western tip of the island.