The largest iceberg on Earth has been set in motion, it is A23a. This frozen mass with an area of 4,000 square kilometers has remained static for years. But why start moving after so long? Since calving off West Antarctica’s Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986, the iceberg, which once housed a Soviet research station, has been largely stranded after its base became stuck on the sea floor. of Weddell, and now it is on the move, which has attracted the attention of the scientific world.
Dr. Andrew Fleming, a remote sensing expert at the British University and an Antarctica scholar, he mentions that this could have been caused by the decrease in size of the glacier.
A23a: wake up after 30 years
The A23a, as it is called, broke off the Antarctic coast in 1986, but almost immediately ran aground in the Weddell Sea, practically becoming an ice island. With almost 4,000 km2, A23a is approximately three times the size of New York City, almost 130 meters deeper than the altitude of Mitikah in CDMX or 186 meters deeper than Pavilion M1 in Monterrey, and weighs almost a billion tons. metrics.
According to glaciologist Oliver Marsh, of the British Antarctic Survey, it is rare to see an iceberg of this size in motion, so scientists will closely monitor its trajectory, for the moment it is suspected that “over time, it has probably thinned slightly and “It has acquired a little more buoyancy that has allowed it to rise from the ocean floor and be pushed by sea currents,” explains Marsh. A23a is also one of the oldest icebergs in the world.
A23a may run aground again on South Georgia Island. That would be a problem for the fauna of Antarctica. Millions of seals, penguins, and seabirds breed on the island and feed in the surrounding waters. Behemoth A23a could cut off that access, given the animals’ migration routes.
In 2020, another giant iceberg, A68, raised fears it would collide with South Georgia, crushing marine life to the sea floor and cutting off access to food. This catastrophe was ultimately averted when the iceberg broke up into smaller pieces, something that could also happen to the A63a.
What can happen with A23a?
Like most icebergs in the Weddell sector, A23a will likely be pushed toward the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which will in turn launch it toward the South Atlantic in a trajectory known as “iceberg alley.” This is the same movement of water, and the west winds, that the famous explorer Ernest Shackleton took advantage of in 1916 to escape from Antarctica after losing his ship, the Endurance. Shackleton pointed his lifeboat toward South Georgia.
It is around this island that large icebergs are frequently seen. The keels of icebergs tend to stick into the shallow continental shelf of the British Overseas Territory. In the end, all icebergs, no matter how large, are doomed to melt and disappear.
This story was written in Spanish by Perla Vallejo in Ecoosfera
