World's biggest iceberg makes a run for it

[Creag]

The world's biggest iceberg is about to enter the open ocean.

A68, a colossus that broke free from the Antarctic in 2017, has pushed so far north it is now at the limit of the continent's perennial sea-ice.

When it calved, the berg had an area close to 6,000 sq km (2,300 sq mi) and has lost very little of its bulk over the past two and a half years.

But scientists say A68 will struggle to maintain its integrity when it reaches the Southern Ocean's rougher waters.

"With a thickness to length ratio akin to five sheets of A4, I am astonished that the ocean waves haven't already made ice cubes out of A68," said Prof Adrian Luckman from Swansea University, UK.

World's biggest iceberg makes a run for it

About a quarter of the size of Wales, the A68 iceberg is about to enter the open ocean.

www.bbc.com

 

[mercurial]

Huge. Massive.

 

[Gordon_R]

Not the biggest ever, just the current largest one:

The biggest ever recorded iceberg in the modern era was the 11,000-sq-km block called B15, which calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000.

One of its last remnants, now measuring "just" 200 sq km, is halfway to the South Sandwich Islands, east of South Georgia.

 

[TheMightyQuin]

 

[Techne]

Close enough yet for Cape Town to fetch it for water?

 

[Pineapple Smurf]

yup biggest one was B15 and it is STILL out there, its now only 200 sq km in size
it broke away 20 years ago

 

[raind33r]

I want some of that ice, seems to last