The largest iceberg on the planet is stranded off the coast of South Georgia Island. This is a common rendezvous spot on a large iceberg, new satellite images show.
Measurement of 1,240 square miles (3,460 square kilometers) Antarctic Iceberg A-23A After a long, winding journey across the Scotia Sea, also known as the “Iceberg Alley,” it was crushed to a halt.
Satellite images taken at the beginning of March show that an iceberg parked on a shallow underwater shelf off the coast of South Georgia is the UK’s overseas territory of the South Atlantic and the largest of nine islands that make up South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.
New images of the A-23A were taken by a Modis (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectroradiomer) instrument. NASA’s Aqua Satellite. An early observation suggests that the iceberg’s northward drift suddenly slowed in late February, according to a statement from the Earth Observatory.
Related: The satellite sees the world’s largest iceberg on a crash course with Penguin Island in Antarctica (Photo/Video)
“I think the big question right now is whether strong currents are trapped there when they melt and break, or if they rotate south of the island like before Berg,” says Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. said in a statement. “I know the time.”
The currents have transported other prominent icebergs to this same area. A-68Awhich was even bigger than the A23A, weighing up to 2,200 square miles (5,698 square km). Initially stuck in December 2020, the A-68A quickly invaded two major parts, continuing to fracture for three months, eventually adding 152 billion tonnes of fresh water to the North Scotia Sea around South Georgia.
The A-23A was spotted from the ice shelf of Filchner Ronne in Antarctica in 1986, and decades later, the iceberg moved more than 1,200 miles (2,000 km) north from his home in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, which began to drift away from the seabed in the early 2020s. Since sitting near South Georgia Island, some small pieces of ice have already been separated from the A-23A, as seen in new satellite images.
“If the iceberg does this much north, they’ll end up in the end Warm seaAn NASA official said in a statement.
Although the remote islands do not have a permanent population, South Georgia supports a wealth of life, ranging from seals and penguins to small phytoplankton. Fresh water Melt From the bottom of the iceberg, it can affect the local marine environment and flora and fauna along the island’s coastline. The satellite will continue to monitor icebergs and ice debris that enter the ocean.
