The world’s greatest iceberg — a wall of ice the scale of Rhode Island — is lumbering towards a distant island off Antarctica that’s dwelling to tens of millions of penguins and seals.
The trillion-ton slab of ice — known as a megaberg — may slam into South Georgia Island and get caught or be guided round it by currents. If it will get caught it may make it laborious for penguin mother and father to feed their infants and a few younger may even starve. General, nevertheless, researchers aren’t too frightened about main hurt from the iceberg, named A23a.
What’s occurring is extra spectacular than harmful, scientists mentioned.
It’s additionally a pure course of occurring extra continuously due to human-caused local weather change, mentioned British Antarctic Survey bodily oceanographer Andrew Meijers, who examined the iceberg up shut in December 2023 when it drifted previous the analysis ship RRS Sir David Attenborough.
“The iceberg itself is colossal and it stretches from horizon to horizon,” Meijers mentioned Thursday of the 130-foot-tall mass. “It’s a huge wall, a ‘Game of Thrones’-style wall of ice that towers above the ship. With some waves breaking against it and if you get a bit of sunshine coming through, it’s really dramatic.”
For each little bit of the iceberg above the water’s floor, there’s 10 occasions extra beneath, Meijers mentioned.
It’s not precisely high-speed motion. The iceberg is making its method at a glacial tempo of 1 meter each three to seven seconds, a lot slower than one mile per hour, Meijers mentioned.
Within the subsequent two to 4 weeks the iceberg will method South Georgia the place the water will get shallow, so it may wedge itself in, Meijers mentioned. Or it may slide previous.
Finally, this massive iceberg will break up into smaller ones and soften as icebergs do, Meijers mentioned.
At full dimension, it doesn’t characterize a lot of a hazard for fishermen within the space, as a result of they will see it. The larger concern is penguins, that are of their summer time breeding cycle, Meijers mentioned.
“South Georgia is an amazingly ecologically rich island. It’s a breeding ground for a huge number of penguins, millions of penguins and seals,” Meijers mentioned. “There’s lots of pups and chicks and they’re all still dependent on their parents.”
The mother and father exit fairly a method into the water and forage. Icebergs can block pathways to their meals, making the adults swim farther, burning extra vitality, bringing again much less to the infants. That “unfortunately can dramatically increase mortality rates. And it has happened in the past,” Meijers mentioned.
That’s dangerous for that colony, nevertheless it doesn’t quantity to an issue for general penguin populations, Scambos mentioned.
“The whole ecosystem in the Southern Ocean is very resilient to these events,” he wrote. “It has evolved with these icebergs being a factor for hundreds of thousands of years.”