An iceberg twice the size of Greater London has been spinning on the spot near Antarctica for at least eight months.
A23a, the world’s largest iceberg, caught itself on a massive rotating cylinder of water known as a Taylor Column in December, and has been rotating at a rate of around 15 degrees a day.
This constant rotation is keeping the massive frozen block from melting and fragmenting, scientists told the BBC, adding that A23a could be trapped in the vortex for years.
Polar expert Professor Mark Brandon said: ‘Usually you think of icebergs as being transient things; they fragment and melt away. But not this one.
‘A23a is the iceberg that just refuses to die.’
The world’s largest iceberg, called A23a, has has been spinning on the spot near Antarctica for at least eight months
A23a, the world’s largest iceberg, caught itself on a massive rotating cylinder of water known as a Taylor Column in December, and has been rotating at a rate of around 15 degrees a day
A23a is the surviving largest fragment of an iceberg that broke free of the Antarctic’s Filchner Ice Shelf in August 1986
A23a is the surviving largest fragment of an iceberg that broke free of the Antarctic’s Filchner Ice Shelf in August 1986.
It had only moved a couple of hundred miles when it became stuck, or ‘grounded’ to the ocean floor – and ended up becoming stationary for the next 30 years.
Icebergs ‘ground’ on the ocean floor when their keel (the bit below the water’s surface) is deeper than the water’s depth.
Scientists revealed in November that the berg is on the move again, being carried northwards by wind and ocean currents.
They estimated that it has a surface area of 1,500 square miles, a volume of 263 cubic miles and a mass just below one trillion tonnes.
That makes it not only four times as big as Greater London, but a whopping 100 million times as heavy as the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The former record holder was A76, which detached from an ice shelf in the Weddell Sea in May 2021, but it has since fragmented into three pieces.
There’s a chance the huge berg could disrupt the feeding routines of wildlife such as penguins – for example, if it parked in an area where foraging usually happens.
‘It depends on its trajectory, but there is potential for impact to wildlife if it approaches any of the sub-Antarctic islands,’ a BAS spokesperson told MailOnline.
