Mega-iceberg Drifts towards Antarctic Penguin Island

The iceberg could threaten penguins as they forage to feed their young. Patrick HERTZOG / AFP/File
The iceberg could threaten penguins as they forage to feed their young. Patrick HERTZOG / AFP/File
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Mega-iceberg Drifts towards Antarctic Penguin Island

The iceberg could threaten penguins as they forage to feed their young. Patrick HERTZOG / AFP/File
The iceberg could threaten penguins as they forage to feed their young. Patrick HERTZOG / AFP/File

The world's biggest iceberg -- more than twice the size of London -- could drift towards a remote island where a scientist warns it risks disrupting feeding for baby penguins and seals.

The gigantic wall of ice is moving slowly from Antarctica on a potential collision course with South Georgia, a crucial wildlife breeding ground in the South Atlantic.

Satellite imagery suggested that unlike previous "megabergs" this rogue was not crumbling into smaller chunks as it plodded through the Southern Ocean, Andrew Meijers, a physical oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey, told AFP on Friday.

He said predicting its exact course was difficult but prevailing currents suggested the colossus would reach the shallow continental shelf around South Georgia in two to four weeks.

But what might happen next is anyone's guess, he said.

It could avoid the shelf and get carried into open water beyond South Georgia, a British overseas territory some 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) east of the Falkland Islands.

Or it could strike the sloping bottom and get stuck for months or break up into pieces.

Meijers said this scenario could seriously impede seals and penguins trying to feed and raise their young on the island.

"Icebergs have grounded there in the past and that has caused significant mortality to penguin chicks and seal pups," he said.
'White wall'
Roughly 3,500 square kilometers (1,550 square miles) across, the world's biggest and oldest iceberg, known as A23a, calved from the Antarctic shelf in 1986.

It remained stuck for over 30 years before finally breaking free in 2020, its lumbering journey north sometimes delayed by ocean forces that kept it spinning in place.

Meijers -- who encountered the iceberg face to face while leading a scientific mission in late 2023 -- described "a huge white cliff, 40 or 50 meters high, that stretches from horizon to horizon".

"It's just like this white wall. It's very sort of Game of Thrones-esque, actually," he said, referring to the dark fantasy series.

A23a has followed roughly the same path as previous massive icebergs, passing the east side of the Antarctica Peninsula through the Weddell Sea along a route called "iceberg alley".

Weighing a little under a trillion tons, this monster block of freshwater was being whisked along by the world's most powerful ocean "jet stream" -- the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

Raul Cordero from Chile's University of Santiago, who is also part of the National Antarctic Research Committee, said he was confident the iceberg would sidestep South Georgia.

"The island acts as an obstacle for ocean currents and therefore usually diverts the water long before it reaches the island," he said.

"The iceberg is moved by that water flow, so the chances of it hitting are not that high," though chunks could, he said.

Another scientist, glaciologist Soledad Tiranti currently on an Argentinian exploration voyage in the Antarctic, said that icebergs such as A23a "are so deep that before reaching an island or mainland they generally get stuck" on the seabed.

Icy obstacle
It is summer in South Georgia and resident penguins and seals along its southern coastline are foraging in the frosty waters to bring back food to fatten their young.

"If the iceberg parks there, it'll either block physically where they feed from, or they'll have to go around it," said Meijers.

"That burns a huge amount of extra energy for them, so that's less energy for the pups and chicks, which causes increased mortality."

The seal and penguin populations on South Georgia have already been having a "bad season" with an outbreak of bird flu "and that (iceberg) would make it significantly worse," he said.

As A23a ultimately melted it could seed the water with nutrients that encourage phytoplankton growth, feeding whales and other species, and allowing scientists to study how such blooms absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

While icebergs are natural phenomena, Meijers said the rate at which they were being lost from Antarctica was increasing, likely due to human induced climate change.



Ireland and UK Clean up after Unprecedented Storm Brings Record Winds and Damage

 A man takes a picture of a fallen tree, after Storm Éowyn hits, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, January 24, 2025. (Reuters)
A man takes a picture of a fallen tree, after Storm Éowyn hits, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, January 24, 2025. (Reuters)
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Ireland and UK Clean up after Unprecedented Storm Brings Record Winds and Damage

 A man takes a picture of a fallen tree, after Storm Éowyn hits, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, January 24, 2025. (Reuters)
A man takes a picture of a fallen tree, after Storm Éowyn hits, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, January 24, 2025. (Reuters)

Emergency crews began cleaning up Saturday after a storm bearing record-breaking winds left at least one person dead and more than a million without power across the island of Ireland and Scotland.

Work was underway to remove hundreds of trees blocking roads and railway lines in the wake of the system, named Storm Éowyn (pronounced AY-oh-win) by weather authorities.

In Ireland, wind snapped telephone poles, ripped apart a Dublin ice rink and even toppled a giant wind turbine. A wind gust of 114 mph (183 kph) was recorded on the west coast, breaking a record set in 1945.

A man died after a tree fell on his car in County Donegal in northwest Ireland, local police said. They named the victim as 20-year-old Kacper Dudek.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the Republic of Ireland, neighboring Northern Ireland and Scotland, remained without electricity on Saturday,

“The destruction caused by some of the strongest winds on record has been unprecedented,” said Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, adding that “every effort is being made to get high voltage transmission lines up and running, homes reconnected and water supplies secured.”

Schools were closed and trains, ferries and more than 1,100 flights were canceled Friday in the Republic of Ireland and the UK City centers in Dublin, Belfast and Glasgow were eerily quiet as people heeded government advice to stay home.

Part of the storm’s energy originated with the system that brought historic snowfall along the Gulf Coast of the US, said Jason Nicholls, lead international forecaster at the private weather company AccuWeather.

Éowyn became a bomb cyclone, which happens when a storm’s pressure drops 24 millibars in 24 hours and strengthens rapidly. The storm was so powerful that meteorologists say a sting jet developed, meaning Éowyn tapped into exceptionally strong winds higher up in the atmosphere.

A sting jet is a narrow area of winds moving 100 mph (161 kph) or faster that is drawn down to the Earth’s surface from the mid-troposphere and lasts for a few hours.

Scientists say pinpointing the exact influence of climate change on a storm is challenging, but all storms are happening in an atmosphere that is warming abnormally fast due to human-released pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane.

“As the climate gets warmer, we can expect these storms to become even more intense, with greater damage,” said Hayley Fowler, a professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University.