FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The "odyssey" of A23a, the iceberg that once held the title of the largest on the planet with an area twice the size of London, is coming to an end. After a journey full of twists and turns, this historic ice edifice has melted, crumbled and disintegrated in spectacular fashion in recent weeks, now in the "grips of death", reports the BBC.
To understand the magnitude of A23a's survival, we need to go back to 1986, the year of the Chernobyl disaster. At that time, A23a broke away from Antarctica's Filchner Ice Shelf, but almost immediately "got stranded" at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, where it remained stranded for more than 30 years.
Its reactivation began in 2020, drawing scientists into a real-time "television drama" as the iceberg traversed the so-called "Iceberg Avenue," became trapped in giant eddies, and survived repeated collisions with the seabed.
Despite its stability for decades, 2025 proved to be the year of the countdown. At the start of the year, A23a remained a giant that would span almost the entire length of the English Channel. However, its exposure to warmer currents and mechanical pressures began to erode it from within.
August-September 2025: The iceberg became trapped on a seamount, where the rotating forces of the waters began to "erode" it, causing the formation of smaller icebergs (A23g, h and i).
December 2025: The appearance of deep blue lakes of melting ice on its surface, visible even from the International Space Station, signaled the beginning of the end. The phenomenon of "hydrocollapse," where water seeps into cracks and violently opens them, led to an explosive breakup.
Although iceberg calving is a natural phenomenon, scientists are studying the fall of A23a as a "mobile laboratory."
"We are learning a lot about how these large icebergs evolve in warmer conditions so that we can predict how the Antarctic ice shelves will respond to climate change," explains Dr. Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
By March 5, 2026, A23a had shrunk to 180 square kilometers. Traveling north at 2.7 km/h, it is now exposed to waters with a temperature of 10°C, which act like a “hot drink” melting an ice cube.
Experts estimate that once its surface area drops below 70 square kilometers, its monitoring will stop. “All traces of it will probably be gone within a few weeks,” says Professor Adrian Luckman. The oldest iceberg’s epic journey ends far from its homeland, closer to the equator than London, leaving behind valuable insights into the future of the planet’s ice.
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