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Last week, the European Space Agency (ESA) warned about the huge A68A ice block.
The 4,200-square-kilometer ice mass was heading directly for South Georgia. There he runs the risk of blocking the roads that the island’s penguins, seals and birds use to hunt for food.
But now the iceberg has undergone a dramatic change. This week, strong currents in the South Atlantic caused the platform to pivot nearly 180 degrees and then split in two.
“You can almost think of it as a handbrake for the iceberg, because the currents were so strong,” Geraint Tarling, a biologist at the British Institute for Antarctic Research, told The Guardian.
The new iceberg has already been named
The interrupted part is smaller, but big enough to have its own name: A68D.
The collision appears to have set the platform on a new course away from the original mountain. At the same time, the larger mountain has changed course and researchers now believe it will hit the east coast of South Georgia rather than the southwest coast.
However, the change makes no difference to the island’s wildlife. If rock meets land, it can set the entire ecosystem in motion, with rising sea levels and decreasing temperatures both on land and at sea.
– Ecosystems can and will recover, of course, but there is danger here if this huge iceberg gets stuck. Then it can stay for 10 years, Geraint Tarling previously told Reuters.
A68a broke off the ice of the Antarctic “Larsen C” glacier in 2017. Since then, it has followed the currents to South Georgia.
