What we learned to fly on the world’s largest iceberg A23a – and why it’s not long for this world | World News

It’s hard to believe what you’re seeing as it’s 1,000 feet above the world’s largest iceberg.

It stretches all the way to the horizon – a white field as far as you can see.

Its edges look thinner in comparison. In fact, its edges look thin until you realize it’s an ice cliff hundreds of feet tall.

Scientists who used satellites to track decades of meandering on icebergs north of Antarctica are called Iceberg A23a.

But up close, numbers and letters are not justice.

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It is a seemingly endless white slab, bordered by aquamarine glow – the ocean at its base is backlit by a threshold of reflective ice below.

Monotone yet spectacular. We fly along the coastline of the Ice Country.

Also, I can’t believe you’re watching it.

The place that runs 50 miles off the coast of a small island in South Georgia – seems incredibly far.

We are 800 miles from the Falkland Islands and 900 miles from Antarctica ice waste.

There is no runway in South Georgia, so there is only one aircraft flying here.

About once a month, the Falkland-based Royal Air Force A400 transport aircraft carry out cold staring operations. This is maritime surveillance and enforcement flights through the UK’s overseas territory, including the nearby South Sandwich Islands.

Although it’s a 2-hour flight to South Georgia, it’s smooth and smooth.

But when the island’s dramatic peaks appear in our view, it is scary, at least for inexperienced passengers.

A gust of wind blew from the mountains, and the steep terrain throws planes and their residents.

It doesn’t stop pilots from completing the island’s circuit.

We fly through some of the 500,000 square miles of marine reserves designed to protect the largest concentrations of marine mammals and birds on the planets found in South Georgia.

Only then will we head to the iceberg. And even if it’s only a few minutes flying from South Georgia, it’s hard to see at first. It is very large and white and cannot be distinguished from the horizon through haze.

Suddenly, you can see the edge.

It will soon become clear that the A23A will not be in this world for a long time. The large, hundreds of metres-long iceberg has already broken and is approaching South Georgia.

A crack appears along its edge, and the cave arch at its base is eroded by the warm seas here, weakening and further weakening the ice.

Icebergs may raise issues with some of the highly abundant penguins, seals and seabirds of South Georgia. A rapidly fragmented clutter of ice can suffocate certain bays and beaches where animal colonies breed.

Trillion tons of freshwater melting from icebergs can also hinder the food web that maintains marine life.

However, the breeding season is nearing its end, and icebergs are also known to fertilize the oceans with sediments transported from Antarctica.

read more:
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The impact on shipping costs is more relevant. There aren’t many here. However, fishing boats, cruise ships and research teams produce these bodies of water and small blocks of ice called “grocers.”

A23A creates a lot.

This large iceberg is too few to know if scientists are becoming more frequent.

However, they are clearly symptoms of the tendency to appear. As our climate warms, the Antarctic slowly melts.

It loses about 150 billion tons of ice a year – half of it breaks the continent in the form of icebergs calving from glaciers, while the rest melts directly from its vast ice sheet as temperatures gradually rise.

The pace of the A23A collapse is much faster. It disappears in months rather than thousands of years.

But when we see its edge collapse and slip into the South Atlantic, we can’t see it as the fate of the entire miniature continent.