Once a social media sensation, A68 iceberg has melted away and is no more. The iceberg was spread over an area of more than 6000 sq km but in 2017 it broke away from Antarctica. The gigantic iceberg was like a small country and was equal to a quarter of the size of Wales!
But satellite images show that the iceberg has melted away and gone after being broken into numerous tiny fragments. The US National Ice Center says that the mega-berg is no longer worth tracking. Last the berg was seen from the Larson C Ice Shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula, and for a year it did not move at all.
However, it started drifting north at a high speed because of strong currents and winds. Later, the billion-tonne block was seen spinning out into the South Atlantic towards the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia. This small island is known to be the place where icebergs go to die by melting away. But A68 miraculously escaped the deathbed for not for long.
The famous iceberg was instead consumed by the warm water, waves and higher air temperatures in the Atlantic. It broke into smaller pieces and eventually died.
Adrian Luckman, from Swansea University, told a leading news agency, “It’s amazing that A68 lasted as long as it did. If you think about the thickness ratio – it’s like four pieces of A4 paper stacked up on top of one another. So this thing is incredibly flexible and fragile as it moved around the ocean. It lasted for years like that. But it eventually broke into four-to-five pieces and then those broke up as well.”
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