THE Largest iceberg in the world called A23A, seems to have stranded after floating in the Antarctic Ocean near the Antarctic, since 2020.
Weighing almost one trillion metric tons (1.1 trillion tons), the A23a stopped on the island of Georgia do Sul, a British overseas territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean, according to a statement by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) published on Tuesday (4).
Iceberg covered an area of 3,672 square kilometers when measured in August 2024 – slightly smaller than Rhode Island and more than double the size of London.
He detached from the Filchner ice platform in Antarctica in 1986, and then remained at the bottom of the Sea in the Weddell Sea for over 30 years. By 2020, he began to float with the ocean chains, but at the end of 2024 he was arrested for months revolving around a submarine mountain, delaying his expected journey to the north.
After finally it was broken, it was feared that the A23A would head toward Southern Georgia and prevent access to the food and penguin food areas that reproduce on the island. But these concerns decreased, as the iceberg seems to be stranded on the continental shelf about 90 kilometers from the coast.
“If the iceberg remains stranded, we do not expect it significantly affects the local wildlife of southern Georgia,” said Andrew Meijers, BAS oceanographer in the statement.
On the contrary, your arrival can bring some benefits to wildlife. “The nutrients released by the cliff and its melting can increase the availability of food for the entire regional ecosystem, including charismatics penguins and seals,” he says.
And although the iceberg seems to be maintaining its structure for now, in recent decades, great icebergs that followed this route “soon broke down, scattered and melted,” said Meijers.
“Now that it is stranded, it is still likely to break due to increased tensions, but this is virtually impossible to predict,” he added. “Great icebergs have already traveled a long way to the north before – one reached 1,000 km from Perth, Australia once – but they all inevitably break and melt quickly afterwards.”
When the A23A finally fragments, the smaller icebergs it produces will pose a risk for fishing and transportation operations, as they are harder to detect and track than a megaberg, mentions Meijers.
“Discussions with fishing operators suggest that large icebergs of the past have made some more or less prohibited regions for fishing operations for some time due to the number of smaller but often more dangerous pieces of icebergs,” he explains.
Scientists said this particular iceberg probably separated as part of the natural ice platform growth cycle and not due to the climate crisis caused by fossil fuels.
But global warming is causing worrying changes in Antarctica, with potentially devastating consequences for the global increase in sea level.
This content was originally published in the largest iceberg in the world stuck in Georgia do Sul on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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