A-68a Moving Along

A-68a is not an aircraft model from Airbus or a virus name, it is the US National Ice Center assigned tag for the fourth largest iceberg in known history, and it is drifting northward into the wide-open ocean.

To us North Americans, nothing tangible changes other than when the iceberg A-68a melts, it is gone. However, do not think you are going to notice a sea level rise with your naked eye. Melting away causes nothing to earth’s water level as the iceberg displaced the water already. Thousands of those sizable icebergs need to slide into the water before it is perceptible on your shores without measuring devices. Since thousands of those sizable icebergs will never happen during your lifetime, you will never see any effect of it.

Here is a video from ESA from 2017, showing the area (Larsen Ice Shelf) before the iceberg A68a came to be.

The image below showing a portion of A-68a, is in the ballpark of 1km. Even if the photo shows 700 meters or 1.5Km matters little, because what matters is that you think there is about 174Km (108 miles) more of it and about 50Km (31 miles) in distance across. That is big!

Iceberg A-68a Section
Photo by: Ash.dep CC BY-SA 4.0 Edited by: John of Neokibo

However, in the meantime, as it gets closer to the southern Atlantic region, ships traveling close enough can have a glance at it. In addition, its trail of cold stream will be measurable for long distances.

By the way, these massive chunks breaking off, are happening more frequently. You know what is causing it, right?