California, US (BBN)-A roughly 2,000-square-mile block of ice just broke off in the Arctic Ocean.
The chunk, which sits in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, took just two days to separate from the surrounding ice, reports the Tech Insider.
And thanks to NASA we can actually see it happen.
Photo: NASA
Here's a side-by-side comparison, with March 12 on the left and March 14 on the right, with the ice chunk circled:
Photo: NASA
That's huge. It's about the size of Rhode Island and slightly smaller than Delaware.
Below is an illustration to put that into perspective. A roughly to-scale outline of Rhode Island is on the right:
Photo: NASA
While epic, the event is not that shocking.
The Earth is now emerging from its warmest winter on record.
The Northern Hemisphere in particular also just slipped past an alarming 2-degree-Celsius average temperature for the first time in history.
Polar regions like the Arctic are our canaries in the global warming coal mine.
We're already facing worldwide sea level rise and extreme weather events that are now officially linked to climate change.
If this isn't a wake-up call, we don't know what is.
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