The world’s largest iceberg, known as A-23A, has been effectively parked up off the coast of South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Originally it was part of Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf until it broke away in 1986, and it has been on quite a journey since.

For around thirty years the iceberg was stuck on the seabed of the Weddell Sea, in an Antarctic bay, before it set itself free and journeyed north in 2020.

However, according to new data from NASA’s Earth Observatory, the iceberg might soon lose its title of the world’s largest, thanks to a series of conditions it is facing at sea.

According to new imagery, A-23A appears to be getting smaller. That’s because the iceberg seems to have become stuck once more, most likely trapped by yet another shallow sea floor.

While it has been trapped in its current location for the past two months, it has been subject to waves and weather chipping away at it while it remains stationary.

Meanwhile the images captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite suggest that the iceberg has lost 140 square miles of surface area during that time. As a result, the ocean around it is littered with hazardous icy debris, as NASA explain in a statement:

“Thousands of iceberg pieces litter the ocean surface near the main berg, creating a scene reminiscent of a dark starry night. Though these fragments appear small in the image, many measure at least a kilometer across and would pose a risk to ships. One fragment, A-23C, was large enough to be named by USNIC after it broke from A-23A’s southern side in mid-April.”

Even if it becomes unstuck, the prognosis for A-23A is still quite alarming.

That’s because what was once the world’s largest iceberg is likely to go through some very predictable processes as it continues its journey.

Generally icebergs that break off from Antarctica – 90 per cent of them, in fact – follow the same trajectory as A-23A, following a clockwise route through Antarctic waters and out into the South Atlantic, which eventually causes them to melt completely.

Add to this the edge wasting evident on the images of the iceberg – a process in which sudden warm or sunny weather causes parts of an iceberg’s edge to break up – and it seems that A-23A’s fate is already foretold.

Meanwhile, the world’s current second-largest iceberg, D15A, is waiting in the Amery Sea to claim A-23A’s title. For now, at least.

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