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Published33 minutes ago
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Like a dainty ballerina, the world’s biggest iceberg has just completed a perfect pirouette.
The near-trillion-tonne frozen block, A23a, began its spin at the beginning of the year, while holding broadly the same position just north of the Antarctic Peninsula.
The berg is expected shortly to step into a powerful current that will sweep it away into the Southern Ocean.
A23a covers an area more than twice that of Greater London.
The video on this page comes from the US space agency’s Modis satellite sensor system.
A23a broke from the Antarctic coast in 1986, before grounding itself on a shallow part of the Weddell Sea floor for three decades.
Only in the past couple of years has the berg made serious progress in trying to get away from the continent.
Recent weeks, though, have seen its northward drift slow somewhat.
A23a is currently turning on its heels in a stretch of water between Elephant Island and the South Orkney Islands – small parcels of land at the tip of the peninsula.
It cannot be seen in the satellite imagery – but A23a is loitering just behind the South Scotia Ridge, which is like a submerged continuation of the peninsula.
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