The world’s largest iceberg is “rapidly breaking up” into several large “very large chunks,” scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have said.
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Previously weighing nearly a trillion metric tonnes (1.1 trillion tons) and spanning an area of 3,672 square kilometers (1,418 square miles) — slightly bigger than Rhode Island — the A23a iceberg has been closely tracked by scientists ever since it calved from the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf in Antarctica in 1986.
A23a has held the “largest current iceberg” title several times since the 1980s, occasionally being surpassed by larger but shorter-lived icebergs, including A68 in 2017 and A76 in 2021.
Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at BAS, told CNN in an email Wednesday: “The iceberg is rapidly breaking up, and shedding very large chunks, themselves designated large icebergs by the US national ice centre that tracks these.”
