Satellite Photo Shows World’s Largest Iceberg Breaking Into Thousands of Pieces

The largest iceberg in the world has split off into thousands of smaller chunks after colliding with an Antarctic island.

The A23a iceberg, which NASA had deemed the largest in the world since 2023, was seen losing large chunks of ice after drifting toward the island of South Georgia.

The Context

In December last year, A23a escaped from an ocean current vortex that had trapped it just to the north of the South Orkney Islands for months, rotating anticlockwise more or less on the spot at a rate of about 15 degrees every day. At the time, NASA predicted that it would float toward South Georgia.

What To Know

Half a year later, and NASA’s prediction has proven correct; new images from NASA’s Aqua satellite reveal the iceberg losing large chunks of ice off the South Georgia coast.

According to estimates, the iceberg will now melt as a faster rate after losing much of its initial mass.

In 1986, A23a initially broke off from the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf near the Antarctic Peninsula but almost immediately became grounded on the seafloor in the southern Weddell Sea. The iceberg remained there for over 30 years until it finally floated free in 2020, likely because of melting, and floated northward along the Antarctic Peninsula.

Then, in the summer of 2024, A23a became trapped in a Taylor column, a rotating current, above a bump on the ocean floor called the Pirie Bank.

At its largest, A23a was the size of Rhode Island, with an area of 1,700 square miles in November 2023.

What People Are Saying

NASA representatives described the waters around A23a in a statement on their website, saying: “Thousands of iceberg pieces litter the ocean surface near the main berg, creating a scene reminiscent of a dark starry night. Many measure at least a kilometer across and would pose a risk to ships.”

Jan Lieser, an ice specialist at the Antarctic Meteorological Service who has been tracking A23a on a NASA blog post, said in December: “I am not aware of an iceberg that has been trapped in such a persistent manner in such a small area.

“My hypothesis is that a random perturbation in the system might have triggered a slight variation of the ‘usual’ spin, such that the iceberg found an exit path.”

What Happens Next

NASA expects the iceberg to melt in the coming months as it loses more massand it could lose its status as the largest iceberg in the world by the end of the year.