Satellite tv for pc view of iceberg A23a within the Southern Ocean, exhibiting meltwater on its floor
NASA
Meltwater on a metropolis‑sized iceberg within the Southern Ocean is quickly forming a large pool on its floor – probably an indication that it’s near breaking up.
Scientists are captivated by the frozen colossus, referred to as A23a, as a result of meltwater is amassing and being held on its floor in an uncommon means.
Satellite tv for pc pictures reveal a raised rim of ice operating across the complete cliff fringe of the tabular Antarctic iceberg, giving it the looks of an outsized youngsters’s play pool — besides this one spans about 800 sq. kilometres, an space bigger than Chicago.
In locations, the ponded water seems a deep, vivid blue, suggesting depths of a number of metres. Throughout the entire of A23a, the water quantity in all probability runs into billions of litres – sufficient to fill 1000’s of Olympic‑sized swimming swimming pools.
Douglas MacAyeal on the College of Chicago says the rim impact is typical of the world’s largest icebergs.
“My principle is that the sides are bent, nostril‑down, creating an arch‑like dam on the highest floor that retains the meltwater inside,” he says. “The bending might be a mixture of cliff-face undercutting by waves and melting, and the pure tendency for ice cliffs to bend over even when they might be completely vertical in any other case.”
The streaks of floor water seen within the satellite tv for pc imagery are a relic of the way in which the ice as soon as flowed when the iceberg was nonetheless connected to Antarctica’s shoreline, he says.
A photograph of the iceberg taken by an astronaut on the Worldwide Area Station on 27 December 2025
NASA
A23a is an outdated iceberg. It calved from the Filchner–Ronne ice shelf in 1986 and was then greater than 5 occasions its present dimension. For some time, it held the title of the world’s largest iceberg.
Lately, nonetheless, it has drifted north into hotter waters and air, and is now present process relentless fragmentation. The sheer quantity of meltwater pooling on its floor could lastly break it aside. “If that water drains into cracks and refreezes, it is going to prise the berg open,” says Mike Meredith on the British Antarctic Survey.
It may, he says, flip to mush nearly in a single day.
Matters:
