It seems that the world's largest iceberg ran agility off the coast of a distant British home island with millions of penguins and seals – potentially threatening local wildlife, but also provides the possibility of researching such rare “megabers”.
Known as A23A, a massive ice plate – more or less the size of Rhode Island and almost a trillion tone – for the first time heads towards southern Georgia a few months ago, causing fears that it can collide with the island and disturb the balance for local wild nature.
The British Antarctic survey (bass) said on Tuesday that the iceberg apparently hit the continental shelf surrounding southern Georgia, stuck about 73 kilometers from the island itself.
Whether A23A will get stuck for a long time – and what effect it can have on local nature – is still in the air.
“It will be interesting to see what will happen now,” said Andrew Meijers on Tuesday, an oceanographer from the bass.
The Sub-Antarctic Island of Southern Georgia is British foreign territory, which lies north of Antarctica and about 1850 kilometers east of South America. It supports a small, inaccurate population of scientists and researchers, but is best known for the abundance of wild nature, including five million seals on four different species and 65 million birds on 30 different species. Among them are wandering Albatros, the largest flying bird in the world and several types of penguins.
One of the fears among researchers is that the iceberg can block wild nature from normal paths to nutrition places, forcing them to move longer distances and restore less food.
But Meijers noticed that the Ice Mountains store important microelements that are released when they melt, and can also mix nutrients settled in deep water, potentially bringing local ecosystem benefits.
If this “high wall” of ice stimulates the performance of the ocean, it can “increase the populations of local predators such as seals and penguins,” he said.
40-year journey
Runn Agound is the latest development of the dramatic, 40-year life of this ice giant.
A23A ripped From the Antarctica ice shelf in 1986, but he remained at the sea at the Weddell sea for the next three decades.
After releasing in 2020 and riding with ocean currents north behind the end of the Antarctic Peninsula, A23A hit another hook: an ocean vortex called the Taylor column, which trapped her on the spot for many months.
Since spinning from the A23A vortex, the spiral slowly towards southern Georgia.
Southern Georgia and the island of South Sandwich in a statement In January, that “strictly monitored” the progress of A23A and that while you can influence the shipping and half, “the impact on wild nature will probably be located and transient.”
Satellite photos have shown that the iceberg approaching the continental shelf at the end of February, before it seemed to freeze in a place when it rides agitably, without much movement from March 1.
What can happen
Donavan Tremblay, an ice specialist from the Coast Guard of Canada, told CBC News that “very possible” A23A may begin to move again, because it is more exposed to storms near the island that could shake or break it.
But “he can also stay there for a while,” he said.
Although icebergs of this size are relatively rare, this is not the first time Megburg threatened southern Georgia. In 2020, the ice cream A68A – formerly the largest in the world, and the sixth largest iceberg of all time reported – separated near the island after influenceing the shelf.
AND 2022 study He stated that A68A released 152 gigatons of fresh water and nutrients to the ocean near southern Georgia. This changed the concentration of surface water salt enough for the effect to last longer than two months after melting the iceberg, according to a separate 2023 study.
Scientists are still delving into an influence on the local ecosystem – including whales, seals and levels of plankton – and A23A helps.
One of the focus of mejers is how releasing nutrients can help generate phytoplankton blooms and potentially increase the ocean ability to capture more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Other scientists want to know what happened at A23a, which would choose huge scars in the seabed and potentially caused underwater landslides, says Alex Normandeau, a scientist from Geological Survey of Canada.
“What are the consequences for maritime geology?” He asked. “Because it affects the habitats in which the ice is grounded, but also affects sedimentary suspension and submarine.”
Icebrygies dividing from Antarctic ice sand and drifting in the north is a regular part of the ice life cycle in Antarctica, but Meijers claims that the data has shown that ice shelves have lost more mass over the past 20 years – scientists of development of climate change.
“These are urgent and active areas of the bass research and elsewhere,” he said.
