The iceberg cometh: It's the size of Oahu, and it's moving into the open ocean
"It's a trillion tons of ice," as one expert told NPR. Now the largest iceberg in the world, A23a, is on the move after decades of being grounded on the seafloor.
Ships plying the frigid waters near the Antarctic Peninsula, south of South America, will need to keep an eye on their radar for a floating island of ice: "The largest iceberg in the world, A-23a, is on the move into open ocean!" as the British Antarctic Survey recently announced.
"It's a trillion tons of ice. So it's hard to comprehend just how big a patch of ice this is," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, told NPR.
Iceberg A23a measures 40 by 32 nautical miles, according to the U.S. National Ice Center. For comparison, Hawaii's island of Oahu is 44 miles. And New York City's Manhattan Island is about 13.4 miles long and spans around 2.3 miles at its widest point.
