After the world’s largest iceberg snapped off of the Antarctic Peninsula in July 2017, it drifted north on a three-year death march, shedding an unfathomable amount of meltwater into the sea. Now, a new study of the doomed iceberg (named A68a) reveals just how much water the infamous mega-berg actually lost — and how that could impact the local ecosystem for generations to come.
Using observations from five satellites, the study authors calculated how much the iceberg’s area and thickness changed as it drifted north through Antarctica‘s Weddell Sea and into the relatively warm waters of the Scotia Sea. There, while the berg appeared to be headed for a direct collision with South Georgia island, iceberg A68a lost more than 152 billion tons (138 billion metric tons) of fresh water in just three months — a mass equal to an incomprehensible volume of water that could fill more than 60 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to the study authors.
“This is a huge amount of meltwater, and the next thing we want to learn […]
whidbeybru here. When an iceberg calves and starts drifting as the one discussed in this story, it does melt but has very limited effect on sea rise because as we all know, an “iceberg” is a floater…. with only about 1/8 of its mass above water. If it were resting on the bottom [not floating] it would add to sea rise because much of the ice mass is above sea level supported by the ground under it. It was not floating. When the ice buildup above ground gets to seriously melting, that’s when you need to grab your water wings.