The world\u2019s largest and most enduring iceberg is splintering into smaller pieces, to the point that it\u2019s no longer the biggest chunk of ice floating in the oceans. <\/p>\n
The shrinking megaberg, known as A23A, is unlikely to survive through the end of November and may face a sudden and spectacular collapse like an avalanche of ice at sea, said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an interesting thing to watch, certainly not unprecedented,\u201d Scambos said Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press. \u201cBut every time these happen, it\u2019s sort of a big spectacular event.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because ice shelves already float on water, ice reductions like this won\u2019t raise the sea level. But the reduction in ice shelves will cause melting land glaciers to flow into the oceans, and that causes sea levels to rise a few feet (meters).<\/p>\n
A23A first broke away from Antarctica\u2019s Filchner\u2013Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986 along a massive crack that scientist first noticed in the 1950s and called \u201cthe Grand Chasm.\u201d It hovered close to the southern continent for about three and a half decades uneventfully until the last couple of years, when it drifted north to the place where massive icebergs go to die, around South Georgia Island, Scambos said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year the iceberg was the size of Rhode Island and weighed in at a trillion tons, now it\u2019s down to the size of Houston and shrinking fast. The world\u2019s new biggest iceberg is D15A. It\u2019s nearly twice as big as the shrunken A23A, according to Andrew Meijers of the British Antarctic Survey.<\/p>\n
A23A has already spawned smaller chunks named A23D, A23E and A23F. NASA satellite images Thursday showed the smaller bergs that weren\u2019t detached just a few days before. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still quite thick, but it\u2019s a lot thinner than it was when it left the continent,\u201d Scambos said. \u201cAnd so now it\u2019s being flexed by long period waves, by tides, which sweep across the area. And with that flexing, even though it\u2019s incredibly gentle and subtle, it\u2019s finding weak spots in the iceberg, and those are breaking off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect its fracturing will accelerate,\u201d Meijers said via email. As the iceberg moves farther north and the Antarctic spring begins, Meijers said that by the end of the season, A23A probably will rapidly fall apart into chunks too small to track.<\/p>\n
If the iceberg survives the Antarctic spring, the summer looks even more brutal, Scambos said. That\u2019s when it can collapse with warm water even at the top and it will then look \u201csort of like an avalanche that\u2019s floating\u201d and even fall apart in a single day, he said.<\/p>\n
In January, Meijers, who visited the iceberg at the end of 2023, painted a different picture of A23A: \u201cThe iceberg itself is colossal and it stretches from horizon to horizon. … It\u2019s a huge wall, a Game of Thrones style wall of ice that towers above the ship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Megabergs spawning is a natural process that has happened for centuries, Meijers said, and so is their breaking apart around South Georgia Island when the current and warmer waters get hold of them, Scambos said.<\/p>\n
Borenstein writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s largest and most enduring iceberg is splintering into smaller pieces, to the point that it\u2019s no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[84748,84749,2724,84752,2737,84747,192,2483,84751,6202,84750,79,572,3585,282,4477,2394],"class_list":{"0":"post-134827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-a23a","9":"tag-andrew-meijers","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-big-iceberg-break","12":"tag-end","13":"tag-enduring-iceberg","14":"tag-environment","15":"tag-ice","16":"tag-ice-shelf","17":"tag-ocean","18":"tag-scambos","19":"tag-science","20":"tag-sea","21":"tag-size","22":"tag-water","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}