Penguins split after the Mammoth Iceberg split into smaller pieces

Then there was the penguin problem.

Environmentalists feared that the island’s huge colonies of king and gentoo penguins would have to make large detours to reach their usual hunting grounds, with potentially serious consequences for chicks waiting back on land.

Instead, more than three years after coming out of the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica, about 930 miles to the south, warmer waters and a couple of currents shattered the behemoth into a dozen pieces, now known as of A68b, A68c and so on under the naming system of the US National Ice Center. Now they seem to be heading north, where it could prove to be a bigger problem for people.

“As it breaks, thousands of smaller icebergs have the potential to obstruct the area’s lanes, especially as they disperse,” said Andrew Fleming, head of remote sensing at the British Antarctic Survey, which watched the A68a travel north through images provided by the European Space Agency and flights by the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom.

The largest section, hereinafter referred to as the A68a, is 330 square miles, larger than New York City, with several pieces almost as large. The separation of the A68a means that the largest iceberg is now the A23a, which erupted from Antarctica in 1986 but remained ashore.

A team from the British Antarctic Survey is on its way to the Falkland Islands to assess the impact of icebergs on the area’s marine ecology and gain insight into what to expect if the Antarctic ice shelf throws more giant bergs worldwide. . temperatures rise.

“Everyone is doing their best to make this happen,” said oceanographer and team leader Povl Abrahamsen aboard RRS James Cook, which will reach the icebergs in mid-February.

Sailing in a package of large icebergs can still be an unpleasant undertaking. In addition to the bergs themselves – especially the subsurface parts – there are ice melting waterfalls and the prospect of growing several pieces, causing big waves. To mitigate the risk, the mission includes two underwater robotic gliders to take samples that will allow the team to have a better idea of ​​what kind of impact such a large mass of icebergs has on ocean conditions off South Georgia, one of the the most biologically rich places on the planet and one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.

The biggest concern is how melting bergs could disrupt the ocean’s food chain. An influx of fresh cold water could kill microscopic marine organisms called phytoplankton, starving the krill that feed on them and depleting populations of fish, seals, penguins and whales.

The area is so abundant in marine life that Norwegian whalers established a hunting ground in South Georgia in the early 20th century, which has since been abandoned.

Today there are no permanent residents on the island, only a rotating team of environmentalists and other scientists who monitor fishing stocks and other wildlife, including albatrosses and seals.

However, the island is becoming increasingly important, as a base from which to monitor the number of icebergs that detach from the ice sheet of Antarctica and head north, to warmer waters.

While the icebergs have always broken or festered from the ice cap, the concern is that a warm climate will flatten it like a melting snow cone, leading more ice to the edge of the continent, where it eventually breaks.

In a study published earlier this week, two geophysicists at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark warned that climate change could cause ocean levels to rise faster than initially feared, increasing the risk of flooding in heavily populated coastal regions.

Aslak Grinsted and Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen looked up data a few centuries ago and found that ocean levels could rise by more than a meter if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius, more than current projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on climate change and by half a meter if temperatures rise by only half a degree Celsius.

Write to James Hookway at [email protected]