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The giant iceberg A-68A, en route to South Georgia Island, has broken into several pieces and is melting an average of 2.5 centimeters per day, continually changing shape, satellite data shows.
The large mass of ice that separated in 2017 from the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica, and has since been monitored by satellites such as the Copernicus Sentinel-1 program and the European Space Agency (ESA) Cryosat. as well as Modis from NASA, the US space agency.
Since the separation, the average melting rate has been 2.5 centimeters per day and it now discharges 767 cubic meters of fresh water per second into the ocean around it, equivalent to 12 times the flow of the River Thames, the river that butter pig London.
At the thickest part, the iceberg currently has a keel depth of 206 meters, so experts believe it is “unlikely” that it will come much closer to the island until it thins or breaks.
Two relatively large fragments that were separated last Monday “are considerably thinner”, with shallow keels, so they “pose a greater immediate threat,” according to an ESA statement.
The iceberg has worried scientists because in the last month it has floated dangerously close to the South Georgia Island archipelago, which has a fragile ecosystem made up of rich flora and fauna, penguins and seals.
The future trajectory of the A-68A depends on the depth of its keel in relation to the surrounding ocean, but due to its variable shape it has not been possible to determine this trajectory exactly.
The archipelago is located in a remote part of the South Atlantic Ocean, but it is surrounded by relatively shallow waters, stretching for tens of kilometers.
If the large mass of ice gets too close, there may be a “massive release” of fresh water into the surrounding sea, with significant environmental impacts.
Scientists at the Center for Polar Modeling and Observation at the University of Leeds in the UK made the first assessment of the change in the path of the iceberg, initially named A-68 when it broke away from Antarctica and was about twice the size of Luxembourg. (It was renamed A-68-A when it lost a large chunk).
The images show that it has been reduced to half the initial area of 5,664 square kilometers, which now measures 2,606 square kilometers.
A significant part of that loss was due to the creation of smaller fragments, some of which are still floating.
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