(ORDO NEWS) — After drifting slowly around Antarctica for more than a year, the world‘s largest iceberg may soon be on its “final journey”.
The giant A-76A ice slab is approximately 135 km long and 26 km wide. It was previously part of the world’s largest iceberg, A-76, which broke off the west side of the Antarctic Ronne Ice Shelf in May 2021. However, it quickly broke up into three parts: A-76A, A-76B and A-76C.
Last way
On October 31, NASA‘s Terra satellite took a picture of an A-76A as it entered the Drake Passage, a deep-sea, fast-moving passage connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The image shows the A-76A between Elephant Island and the South Orkney Islands (both obscured by clouds) in the southern part of the channel, but its trajectory suggests it will head north in the coming weeks. It is there that he will be met by warmer waters, in which most of the large icebergs melt.
To date, the A-76A has already covered about 2,000 km since it broke away from the A-76. So far, the iceberg has managed to avoid significant loss of ice during its journey. The data shows that the ice slab is almost exactly the same size as it was a year ago.
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