CONTRIBUTOR
The world’s largest iceberg, which was an ice island for more than 30 years, has resumed drifting, several reports noted.
Iceberg A23a, 1,280 sq. nautical miles (about 1,695 sq. miles or about 4,390 sq. km.) in area, is the largest iceberg in the world, per the U.S. National Ice Center. This makes it more than three times larger than the about 300.45-sq.-mile New York City, and larger by about 661 sq. miles than Rhode Island, the U.S.’s smallest state. However, the visible cliffs are only the tip of the iceberg, as the ice extends farther down below the waterline, per the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
A23a is about 1,312 feet thick, the BBC reported. This makes it 464 feet shorter than the One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the U.S., and nearly twice as tall as the Trump Tower.
A23a calved from West Antarctica’s Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf on the Antarctic coastline in 1986 but soon became stranded on the Weddell Sea just north of the shelf, Reuters reported. It hosted a Soviet research station, Druzhnaya 1, at the time, the BBC noted. (RELATED: Video Of Giant Iceberg Approaching Homes Is Something Straight Out Of A Nightmare)
“It was grounded since 1986 but eventually it was going to decrease (in size) sufficiently to lose grip and start moving. I spotted first movement back in 2020,” Dr. Andrew Fleming, a remote sensing expert from the British Antarctic Survey, told the BBC.
Strong winds and currents are whipping the nearly a trillion-metric-tonne iceberg towards the South Atlantic along the “iceberg alley” path, and it could possibly halt at South Georgia Island, per Reuters. Once there, it reportedly could block access to the island for millions of seals, penguins, and seabirds which breed and forage there. However, it could also release mineral dust, a key source of nutrients for the ocean’s food chains, the BBC noted.
A23a briefly lost its top ranking to another massive iceberg, A76, in 2021. A76, however, has since melted somewhat and splintered off in turbulent, warmer but still chilly waters and is near South Georgia Island.
A23a, like all icebergs, appears doomed to a similar fate, the BBC noted.
HT/Yooper
OMG!!! We all gonna die right soon now!!
Film at eleven.
Per the New York Times, women and minorities will be hardest hit.
Ha ha ha.
Antarctica needs more fiber.
Naaa.. An article from 1956 mention a real ICEBERG of 32000 sq. km or 12000 sq.miles. This new one is hardly worth mentioning. I was borne in 1956, so I can’t personally verify this, but I remember my father spoke about it.
I have also later read that an HMS Navy ship ran alongside this ICEBERG for a long time and thought it would never end. It’s all in the history. If my memory is correct this ICEBERG was 600km (370 miles) long.
Now, I’m concerned. When will it reach the Texas coast?
The day AFTER……
I’d stop and take a picture of that!!
Of course, they could’ve bought a sign, wait for winter and voilà.
Just go to Hell Michigan in Winter
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4339059,-83.98614,17z/data=!3m1!1e3
OK, South Africa is in desperate need of fresh water, push it there. (does this really need a sarc tag?)
Yes. Follow Poe’s Law.
Actually, I think it was Saudi Arabia that, several years ago, talked about and I believe investigated the feasibility of towing an iceberg from Antarctica to their coast as a source of fresh water.
Yup. Didn’t pencil out. Most of the berg ice is under water so the drag is enormous so the towed forward speed slow. So the berg melts completely before it gets there. The bigger the berg to resist melting, the slower the tow. The smaller the berg for faster tow, , the faster it melts.
Just imagine how may masts you could plant on that puppy! My wife and I took a cruise on a four-masted square rigger earlier this year. The ship was 310 feet long, and her total sail area was about an acre. Based on the quoted area of the iceberg, and the shape eyeballed from the photo, you ought to be able to set up a line of masts carrying about 645 times the sail area of our ship. But that’s only for a single line of masts. You ought to be able to rig up at least 10 lines of masts before the sail density reached a point of diminishing returns, so you’d have the equivalent of 6,450 acres of sail, Again, based on the quoted dimension of the berg, this should add an area of about 10 times the iceberg’s own cliff faces to the surface that winds are currently impinging upon. It would certainly provide much more propulsive force than you could muster even with a fleet of nuclear powered aircraft carriers serving as tugboats. Maybe Willis E. could estimate whether it would be practicable…
Tow it N into the ACC which is cold water traveling east at about 2knots and that will carry you towards S Africa, just have to avoid running aground.
“Nightmare” of the ‘berg along the coast is no such visual thing.
If you lived there and woke in the morning to see it, when it wasn’t there at bedtime — that might make one think they were having a dream. The video does not elicit much of any such thought.
The assumption has to be that these large masses have been immigrating from Antarctica for millions of years. New is the technology to film them and watch them assimilate back into the Ocean. This one is apt to last longer than I do. 🙂
Why hasn’t a government or media type given these things a memorable name like they do hurricanes and other storms? A23a is such a blah name.
GoreIII might work.
Sounds like it was named by a Canadian.
Ouch, eh?
Twenty-three, eh?
A23a should be named ‘Titanic’ in a bold yet ironic gesture!
Needs to come further north so Martha can make some more cocktails!
I was considering AOC…..
So the introduction of such a large mass of frozen (freshwater) into the ocean, where it melts, does two things: it lowers ocean temperature and it lowers the salinity. Looks like the Doomsday Clock needs a pause. Just saying.
The melting in such cold waters is extremely slow
Yes, and unlike sea ice, icebergs are fresh water that rises over the warmer salt water when it melts. This cools the overlying air to a greater degree, and may explain the anomaly of decreasing Antarctic ice while temperatures there drop.
What Would Mikey Say?
“Three Times the Size Of NYC” !!
That gives us no conception of size …
we need to know the cubic capacity in elephants, so we can calculate the number that will drown daily as it melts !!
An atomic bomb ought to be able to break it up.
I started reading tdavenergys comment as a request to express the iceberg size in terms of the Hiroshima bomb. In volume ratio vs what was dropped from an airplane 80 years ago the calculation might yield a Carl Sagan sized number.
Or perhaps the number of “Hiroshimas” needed to turn it all into nice cups of Yorkshire tea by breakfast time.
Ha! I only needed to wait one more iPhone scroll.
A23a almost 4,000 sq km (1,500 sq miles) in area x slab of ice is some 400m (1,312 ft) thick.
4000 km x .4 km = 1,600 km^3 as absolute maximum
But Antarctica has over 26,385,000 of those cubic kilometers. (1997 NASA)
Not going to be running out soon. As Emily Litella would have said, “Never mind!”
I’m a little confused, I know its a big iceberg, but how could it stay unmelted for over 30 years in a boiling ocean?
It melts at a new temperature scale whose units are “Gores”.
For conversion, water boiling point in Gores is 20 degrees Celsius.
So, how many Gores is water freezing point?
At its present position, it’s surrounded by salt water at temperatures of -1.4° to -1.6°C, which doesn’t do much to melt fresh ice that has to be heated above 0° before it melts. This BTW is the same “hot” water that’s causing “catastrophic” melting of the Antarctic ice shelves.
The boiling hasn’t made it that far south yet, but make sure you move away from the coast before it does (/s)
“Strong winds and currents are whipping the nearly a trillion-metric-tonne iceberg towards the South Atlantic along the “iceberg alley” path, and it could possibly halt at South Georgia Island, per Reuters”
Per Earnest Shackleton, “Hold my beer…”
In kph, how fast is “whipping”?
Somwhere around the walking speed of an arthritic ant.
It’s on the ocean, so we should be talking knots.
Knots and whipping really aren’t suitable topics for this family friendly site.
Yes, it’s places like The Guardian which are more into the self-flagellation thing.
A few years ago in a parody, someone even managed to sneak a joke about them past the BBC censors.
The then editor of The Guardian had a motto above his desk:
“Never knowingly enjoy yourself.”
The good news is that this peculiarly detailed/vague information is coming to us via the ever so truth-telling, accurate, model running, propheteering BBC. 😂🤣😂🤣
Actually it’s quoted from something called ‘The Daily Caller’, what the BBC said was “If it does ground at South Georgia, it might cause problems for the millions of seals, penguins and other seabirds that breed on the island. A23a’s great bulk could disrupt the animals’ normal foraging routes, preventing them from feeding their young properly.”
Which seems more sensible.
“has resumed drifting” resume? This must be unprecedented.
“whipping the nearly a trillion-metric-tonne iceberg towards the South Atlantic along” whipping it along. Why it must be moving faster than a gazelle!
“it reportedly could block access to the island for millions of seals, penguins, and seabirds” seabirds! Not even birds could fly over something so large!
Someone wrote all the sentences in that article, The author probably went to a good school.
“”Someone wrote all the sentences in that articl…….
yup. ‘climate’ is the least of our worries.
seriously
This is true.
I’ve been watching the bergs around South Georgia and from the Antarctic coast ever since A76 was said to threaten South Georgia. Always, the currents mean the bergs skirt around it rather than threatening to drift ashore. There’s a biggish one doing the rounds right now. It’s 570square nautical miles. Here’s the track for the past 3 weeks.
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?v=-2448707.765214744,2920181.165256628,-2112338.3902104497,3364389.8913835604&p=antarctic&as=2023-11-07-T00%3A00%3A00Z&ae=2023-11-27-T00%3A00%3A00Z&e=EONET_4440,2023-11-17&efs=true&efa=true&efd=2023-09-14,2023-11-11&efc=seaLakeIce&l=Reference_Labels_15m,VIIRS_SNPP_DayNightBand_ENCC(hidden),Coastlines_15m,MODIS_Terra_Sea_Ice(hidden,disabled=1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10),MODIS_Aqua_Sea_Ice(hidden,disabled=1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10),VIIRS_SNPP_Brightness_Temp_BandI5_Night(hidden),VIIRS_SNPP_Brightness_Temp_BandI5_Day(hidden),VIIRS_NOAA20_Brightness_Temp_BandI5_Night(hidden),VIIRS_NOAA20_Brightness_Temp_BandI5_Day(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Night(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Day(hidden),MODIS_Terra_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Night(hidden),MODIS_Terra_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Day(hidden),BlueMarble_NextGeneration(hidden),VIIRS_NOAA20_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor&lg=true&ab=on&t=2023-11-27-T00%3A00%3A00Z
Short link
https://go.nasa.gov/46xWYrV
Thanks for the heavy lifting.
Icebergs are beautiful up close.
The real tragedy is how many poor, defenseless polar bears will die from this loss of habitat 😉
Wait, what?! Thirty years later and this thing is still here?
And it’s still 3X the size of NYC?
Obviously Climate Change is failing us spectacularly!