Fascinating Facts about Iceberg A68a

A68a is a giant tabular iceberg. As of today, it is recognized as the world’s largest iceberg. It is located on the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia. 

Iceberg A68a

The surface area of A68a is 5,800 square kilometers. It is double the size of Luxembourg. Its weight is estimated at one trillion tonnes. It is also known as one of the largest recorded icebergs.  The iceberg A68a is almost the same size as the state Delaware and separated from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf. It has been drifting towards South Georgia and this area is called British Overseas Territory (BOT).

The satellite images showed that the ice began breaking apart. On December 17, approximately 69 square miles broke from the iceberg, called this new forming A68d. 

Facts about Iceberg a68a

On December 22, the iceberg’s front and pointed tip broke. 3 years ago, the iceberg calved from the Larsen C ice shelf. Now it appears like it lost two-thirds of its size. After one year, iceberg A68a drifted around 40 miles away from its original place.

The term”A-68″ was selected by the US National Ice Center. It broke into parts with a mother berg named A-68A. The bigger child icebergs are called in the order of their birthing such as A-68B, A-68C, A-68D, A-68E, A-68F, and A-68G. 

In July 2017, the ice block, known as the A68 or A68a calved from the Larsen C ice shelf. Experts are unable to tell precisely when A68 was born because of the dense cloud cover and inadequate satellite coverage.  

Researches on Iceberg A68a

Scientists analyzed iceberg A68 was the size of Maryland. It is estimated 1000 feet thick and the weight was 1.1 million tons, approximately it weighed 20 million Titanic ships.

Iceberg A68a can be seen floating through satellites. One animation was shared by the Antarctic research program Project Midas and wrote a blog spot, “The iceberg has been pushed around by ocean currents, tides, and winds, and its northern end has repeatedly been grounded in shallower water.”

“These groundings led eventually to further pieces of the iceberg being shattered off in May 2018. Whilst not quite large enough to be given labels themselves, the total area of icebergs lost from A-68 in May was the size of a small city.”

Adrian Luckman from Swansea University, UK also observed the iceberg and explained, “Nearly three-and-a-half years since it calved away from Larsen C Ice Shelf, Iceberg A68a – the fourth largest on record – is finally beginning to disintegrate.”

Adrian Luckman told BBC News that “With such a massive recent growth in the volume of satellite data and a huge improvement in the speed at which it can be made available, this capability has been put to good use in monitoring this huge iceberg on its journey from birth to destruction.”