![]() It was, after all, one of the biggest recorded icebergs in human history. Bob Wardīob Ward has been following A-68’s journey since it first broke free. Its demise worried scientists, and for good reason. So I’m Bob ward, I’m the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. (That’s the equivalent of 61 million olympic sized swimming pools.) Scientists from Leeds University revealed earlier this year that it had released 152 billion tonnes of freshwater into the sea. Satellites showed the “mega-berge” had melted into countless smaller fragments of ice that weren’t worth tracking anymore.īut a year after we said goodbye to A-68, its impact is still being felt In its first two years of freedom, A-68 stayed close to home in the icy waters of the Weddell Sea and it got a lot of attention from researchers: climate scientists wondered whether more gigantic icebergs were to come, biologists looked into its impact on ecosystems.Īnd, as time wore on, heavy winds, the ocean current and the earth’s rotation meant A-68 drifted north, to warmer waters near South America. Then, after four years, the iceberg’s adventure came to an end. It became something of an internet sensation. It was given a name fit for a Hollywood disaster movie: Iceberg A-68. Now, this isn’t the first time part of an ice shelf has broken free and floated off into the distance - but the sheer size of A-68 generated a lot of attention at the time. That’s right, a trillion – with a T, and covered an area that was over three times the size of London, and twice the size of Luxembourg. In 2017 an iceberg that was the size of a small country broke off Antarctica.Īt the time it weighed a trillion tonnes. Trillion-tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctica… Al Jazeera Today, why the disappearance of an iceberg should worry us all. One story, everyday, to make sense of the world.
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