"Earlier this year, the megaberg known as A23a weighed a little under a trillion tonnes and was more than twice the size of Greater London, a behemoth unrivalled at the time. The gigantic slab of frozen freshwater was so large it even briefly threatened penguin feeding grounds on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, but ended up moving on."
"It was breaking up fairly dramatically as it drifted farther north, Andrew Meijers, a physical oceanographer from the British Antarctic Survey, told AFP. I'd say it's very much on its way out it's basically rotting underneath. The water is way too warm for it to maintain. It's constantly melting, he said. I expect that to continue in the coming weeks, and expect it won't be really identifiable within a few weeks."
A23a calved from the Antarctic shelf in 1986 and grounded in the Weddell Sea, remaining stuck on the ocean floor for over 30 years. The iceberg escaped in 2020 and was carried into the South Atlantic by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Earlier in the year it weighed nearly a trillion tonnes and exceeded twice the area of Greater London. The berg ran aground near South Georgia in March, threatened penguin and seal feeding grounds, then dislodged in late May. As it drifted north into warmer waters it began to break apart rapidly, shedding large and hazardous fragments that endanger shipping and are melting fast.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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