The ESA's Envisat Earth-monitoring satellite spotted icebergs that had broken from the Sulzberger ice shelf, and on March 16, it observed the pieces floating into the Ross Sea.
The largest iceberg was nearly six by four miles, making it slightly bigger in surface area than Manhattan, and it likely had a depth of about 260 feet.
Japanese estimates published a week after the event noted that the tsunami was about 76 feet high, generated by an underwater earthquake with a 9.0 magnitude.
Despite the fact that the waves probably only reached about 18 inches in height by the time they had crossed 8,100 miles of ocean to impact with the ice shelf, the rhythmic up-and-down movement was enough to stress the shelf's structure and cause chunks of it to break off, the ESA said in a press release.
Ice shelves are floating beds of ice attached to the coastline. Huge, thick masses, ice shelves are created by glaciers whose ice is discharged to the sea.
