“Twice the size of London": the world's largest iceberg sets adrift
The world's largest iceberg, called A23a, more than twice the size of London and weighing about billion tonnes, is drifting away. It's currently heading for the Atlantic.
After clinging to the ocean floor for more than 3 decades, it has now been drifting for a year and “seems to be picking up speed”, explains Andrew Fleming, the British Antarctic Survey's remote sensing specialist. The first movement of the huge block of ice, one of the oldest icebergs in the world, was first detected in 2020.
A23a, according to the British Antarctic Survey, is moving along ocean currents towards South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic region. If it runs aground on the island of South Georgia, it could seriously harm the local flora and fauna. Millions of seals, penguins and seabirds breed on the island and forage for food in the surrounding waters. The giant iceberg could prevent them from doing so, reports 7sur7.
Experts nevertheless believe that the A23a iceberg will leave the Southern Ocean and enter the warmer waters of the Atlantic, where it's expected to fragment and melt completely. Biogeochemist Laura Taylor has also highlighted the known ability of these huge blocks of ice to provide nutrients to the waters they pass through, thus promoting dynamic ecosystems in areas that would otherwise be less productive, reports Business AM media.
(MH with AsD - Source: 7sur7/Business AM - Illustration: Unsplash)