A23a: World's Biggest Iceberg

Ever heard of iceberg A23a?  It calved in 1986 and is now the largest, verified by Guinness World Records.

• 263 cubic miles.
• 40 nautical miles by 32 nautical miles space.
• In 2021, iceberg A-76 broke off from the Ronne Ice Shelf off the Weddell Sea, and was larger, but soon fractured.

• 
  But the absolute largest was Iceberg B-15, about the size of Jamaica.  Calved from the Ross Ice Shelf, also Antarctica, on March 2000.  There is still a small piece, B-15AB that has grounded in the western sector of Antarctica's Amery region.

• 
  About A23a, it is twice the size of Greater London, UK.
• Detached from the  Antarctica Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986.
• Was for a long time stuck on the sea-floor of the Weddell Sea, but in 2013 began wandering north toward the South Georgia Island of the Southern Ocean.

There are, of course, other icebergs in the Atlantic off Antarctica.

Here are the icebergs just from Greenland.

The town of Ilulissat on the shores of Disko Bay in western Greenland is called the iceberg capital of the world, and is a UN World Heritage Site.  Greenland produces 40,000 medium to large size icebergs annually, but Antarctica is the home of the majority of the world's iceberg mass, with the Arctic producing 10,000 to 50,000 annually.  These icebergs typically have a four year lifespan.  No real data source, but there are hints of perhaps 500 or so icebergs/year in the Pacific Ocean.

What about the future of icebergs?  More melt could mean more icebergs in the near team.  But by this century, there will probably be fewer.

The Pacific Ocean?  500 or so new icebergs enter the shipping lane.  Also, icebergs from the Southern Ocean drift towards New Zealand.  And, yes, fragments of icebergs get close to the Equator.  While no icebergs have ever reached Hawaii, iceberg A23a is about the size of the island of Oahu.

About icebergs:

• 87% of an iceberg is underwater.
• An iceberg must be 16 feet above sea level to be so called.  Smaller ones are called growlers or bergy bits.
• They have various shapes.

• 
  Ships rarely run into them anymore because of radar.  Even then, the Norwegian Sun in 2022 did hit a growler off Alaska, and was stopped cold, incurring sufficient damage to cancel the cruise.
• 

  But there was, of course, the Titanic, the largest ocean liner then with a capacity for 3.547 passengers, on her maiden voyage, striking an iceberg on 15April1912, southeast of Newfoundland.
• Parlour Suites cost $4,350, or an equivalent of $142,000 today for a one-way passage.

• 
  This is that iceberg to the right.
• Came from Greenland.
• 50-100 feet above water.   Size remains speculative.

• 
  Ship sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes.
• 1500 of 2224 passengers died.  The RMS Carpathia arrived an hour and half later to save 710 survivors.
• There was insufficient lifeboat space for all passengers, but all cruise ships today must accommodate 110% of people on board.

Iceberg for drinking water?

The idea of towing large icebergs to other regions as a source of water has been raised since at least the 1950s, without having been put into practice.^[32] In 2017, a business from the UAE announced plans to tow an iceberg from Antarctica to the Middle East; in 2019 salvage engineer Nick Sloane announced a plan to move one to South Africa^[33] at an estimated cost of $200 million.^[32] In 2019, a German company, Polewater, announced plans to tow Antarctic icebergs to places like South Africa.^[34][35]

American poet, Lydia Sigourney, wrote the poem "Icebergs". While on a return journey from Europe in 1841, her steamship encountered a field of icebergs overnight, during an Aurora Borealis.

Icebergs

There was a glorious sunset on the sea, 
Making the meeting-spot of sky and wave 
A path of molten gold. Just where the flush 
Was brightest, as if Heaven's refulgent gate 
One moment gave its portals to our gaze, 
Just at that point, uprose an awful form, 
Rugged and huge, and freezing with its breath 
The pulse of twilight. Even the bravest brow 
Was blanched, for in the distance others came, 
Sheer on the horizon's burning disk they came, 
Attendant planets on that mass opaque. 

They drifted toward us, like a monster-host, 
From death's dark stream. High o'er old ocean's breast, 
And deep below, they held their wondrous way, 
Troubling the surge. Winter was in their heart, 
And stern destruction on their icy crown. 
So, in their fearful company the night 
Closed in upon us. 
                          The astonished ship 
Watched by its sleepless master held her breath, 
As they approached, and found her furrowing feet 
Sealed to the curdling brine. 

                                          It was a time 
Of bitter dread, and many a prayer went up 
To Him, who moves the iceberg and the storm 
To go their way and spare the voyager. 

Slow sped the night-watch, and when morn came up 
Timid and pale, there stood that frowning host, 
In horrible array, all multiplied, 
Until the deep was hoary. Every bay, 
And frost-bound inlet of the Arctic zone, 
Had stirred itself, methought, and launched amain 
Its quota of thick-ribbed ice, to swell 
The bristling squadron. 
                                Through those awful ranks 
It was our lot to pass. Each one had power 
To crush our lone bark like a scallop-shell, 
And in their stony eyes we read the will 
To do such deed. When through the curtaining mist 
The sun with transient glimpse that host surveyed, 
They flashed and dazzled with a thousand hues, 
Like cliffs with diamond spear-points serried o'er, 
Turrets and towers, in rainbow banners wrapped, 
Or minarets of pearl, with crest of stars, 
So terrible in beauty, that methought, 
He stood amazed at what his glance had done. 
I said, that through the centre of this host
'T was ours to pass. 
                            Who led us on our way? 
Who through that path of horror was our guide? 
Sparing us words to tell our friends at home 
A tale of those destroyers, who so oft 
With one strong buffet of their icy hands 
Have plunged the mightiest ship beneath the deep, 
Nor left a lip to syllable her fate. 

Oh thou! who spread us not on ocean's floor 
A sleeping-place unconsecrate with prayer, 
But brought us to our blessed homes again, 
And to the burial-places of our sires, 
Praise to thy holy name! 

Monday, April 19, 1841.

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