• AutoTL;DRB
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    110 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The colossus is presently drifting in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the great sweep of water that circles the continent in a clockwise direction.

    This current, together with the prevailing westerlies, is pushing A23a in the general direction of the South Orkney Islands, which are about 600km (370 miles) northeast of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

    The interplay of winds, ocean fronts and eddies will determine its precise course over the coming weeks, but many of these giant flat-topped, or tabular, bergs end up passing by the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia.

    Milder air temperatures will create surface melt ponds that drain through the berg, helping to open up fractures.

    And those spectacular surface catacombs and buttresses will collapse to leave extensive areas of submerged ice that will then rise up under their own buoyancy to gnaw away at the berg’s edges.

    Even though it’s lost about a third of its area since calving from Antarctica’s Amery Ice Shelf in 2019, D28 has managed to maintain its basic, compact shape.


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