Nearly 40 years after breaking off Antarctica, a colossal iceberg ranked among the oldest and largest ever recorded is finally crumbling apart in warmer waters, and could disappear within weeks.
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Earlier this year, the “megaberg” known as A23a weighed a little under a trillion tonnes and was more than twice the size of Greater London, a behemoth unrivalled at the time.
The gigantic slab of frozen freshwater was so large it even briefly threatened penguin feeding grounds on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, but ended up moving on.
It is now less than half its original size, but still a hefty 1,770 sq km (683 square miles) and 60km (37 miles) at its widest point, according to Agence France-Presse analysis of satellite images by the EU Earth observation monitor Copernicus.
In recent weeks, enormous chunks – some 400 sq km in their own right – have broken off while smaller chips, many still large enough to threaten ships, litter the sea around it.
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