World’s biggest Iceberg has Broken Up, CNN Reports

The world’s largest iceberg is “rapidly breaking up” into several “very large chunks,” scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) told Lianne Kolirin and Issy Ronald of CNN.

A23a is rapidly breaking up and shedding very large chunks. (Image: NASA Earth Observatory) 

Previously weighing nearly a trillion metric tons (1.1 trillion tons) and spanning an area of 3,672 square kilometers (1,418 square miles) — slightly larger 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.

"The iceberg is rapidly breaking up, and shedding very large chunks, themselves designated large icebergs by the US National Ice Center that tracks these,” Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at BAS, told CNN in an email Wednesday.

The massive slab of frozen freshwater was so large it even briefly threatened penguin feeding grounds on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, before drifting away.

It is now less than half its original size but still measures about 1,770 square kilometers (683 square miles) and 60 kilometers (37 miles) at its widest point, according to Agence France-Presse analysis of satellite images by the EU Earth Observation program Copernicus.

In recent weeks, enormous chunks — some 400 square kilometers in size — have broken off, while smaller fragments, many still large enough to threaten ships, litter the sea around, Laura Paddison also reported for CNN.