Antarctic iceberg A-23A, currently the largest iceberg on Earth, appears to have run aground off the coast of South Georgia island.
Antarctic iceberg A-23A, currently the largest iceberg on Earth, appears to have run aground off the coast of South Georgia island. As of early March 2025, satellite images showed little movement of the 3,460-square-kilometer (1,240-square-mile) berg after its long and winding journey across the Scotia Sea and final approach toward the island.
South Georgia is the largest of nine islands that make up the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, a British overseas territory. While the remote island lacks a permanent human population, scientists visit its research station, and tourists visit its historical sites. The region supports abundant life, from seals and penguins to tiny phytoplankton. It also happens to lie along the northern extent of an ocean route traveled by many Antarctic bergs known as “iceberg alley.”
A-23A’s northward drift suddenly slowed around February 25, 2025, according to Christopher Shuman, a retired glaciologist with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Shuman has used satellite images to track A-23A’s drift since it wiggled free from the seafloor in the early 2020s after decades grounded in the Southern Weddell Sea. The berg is now parked more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) north of its birthplace at Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf, where it calved in 1986.
Read more at NASA Earth Observatory
Image: NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview, ocean bathymetry data and digital elevation data from the British Oceanographic Data Center’s General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) and the British Antarctic Survey.
