Where Is A-76 Now?

Eighteen months ago, we hailed Southern iceberg A-76 as the largest ever observed, and vowed to stay tuned.

Most icebergs break up and melt away quickly, though not without travelling thousand of kilometers. But A-76 is big ol’ girl, and apparently she’s still wandering.

This month, NASA published images of A-76A (the main chunk of A-76) cruising in the Drake Passage, 1000 kilometers from where she started [1].   Not only that, but she’s pretty much the same size.

Image Credit: NASA (From [1])

This sighting is fairly remarkable, since that area is pretty stormy and rough seas, so A-76A must have survived quite a beating.  It also must have survived the relative warmth of last summer.  The berg is now coming out of her second winter and emerging into her second summer, which is pretty darn old for an iceberg!

Who knows where she will wander to, or how long she till last?  We’ll stay tuned.

---

1. Kathryn Hansen, Iceberg A-76A in the Drake Passage, in NASA Earth Observatory – Image of the Day, November 4, 2022. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150559/iceberg-a-76a-in-the-drake-passage