A76A, South Atlantic

The imaginatevely named A76A is currently the world’s largest iceberg, about 135 km long and 26 km wide. It separated from the Ronne ice shelf in Antarctica as part of en even bigger iceberg, the A76, that soon broke into three parts. The biggest of these, A76A, has been drifting around Antarctica for a year, but has in recent months moved further north towards the Drake passage. So far, the iceberg has hardly melted at all.

The Drake Passage waterflow is part of the west-to-east Atlantic Circumpolar Current that runs across the globe, and will soon take the A76A into warmer waters where it will melt away. We do not know how quickly this will happen, nor where the iceberg will then be, but based on established patterns, this is what happens when icebergs enter the Drake Passsage.

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