The End Is Near For Our Intrepid Iceberg A23a

Credit: NASA

I bet you weren't expecting to hear the name A23a again, but the iceberg has once again made the news. It's been a long journey for the utterly massive block of ice, but at long last A23a's time has come. Satellite images shows blue meltwater all over its surface, and it also seems as if A23a has sprung a leak, with the weight of the water on top punching a hole through the ice to the ocean below. It is not expected to last through the Southern Hemisphere summer, which means it's only got a couple months at most.

Since I've covered A23a twice before (here and here), I won't go into too many details into its history, but it is nice that it was able to reach its 40th year. Considering how the planet is continuing to warm, I don't imagine we'll see future icebergs get so old.

The Adventures of Iceberg A23a Continues

Been a while since I've written about something not golf or beer related, but it's been a busy few months.

Anyway, a while back I wrote about A23a, an iceberg caught in an ocean current that was spinning in place like the world's largest top. In the following months, A23a managed to break free, but now it's potentially heading for more trouble: a collision with South Georgia Island. This is hardly an unprecedented threat, as a similarly large iceberg threatened the island in 2020, but it is worth observing. Scientists have anticipated A23a will break apart into smaller, relatively harmless chunks, but that hasn't happened yet, so we still have a block of ice the size of Rhode Island bearing down on a vital piece of land for numerous forms of wildlife. Plus, anything living on the ocean floor would quite obviously be crushed as the enormous iceberg grinds to a halt on the island's continental shelf.

A23a doesn't pose much threat to people, fortunately, as the only resident of South Georgia are researchers, and the Southern Ocean isn't exactly well-traveled water for ships. But it's been a bit of a media hog, as far as state-sized icebergs are concerned, so I wouldn't be surprised if it does manage to hold together and run into the island, just for that last bit of news glory.