A giant iceberg has broken off the Pine Island Glacier and is threatening to disrupt shipping in the Southern Ocean.  This iceberg is 70,000 hectares large – comparable in size to Singapore, America’s “Second City” Chicago, or NSW’s Goulburn River National Park.

A team of British scientists from Sheffield and Southampton universities have been awarded an A$85,000 grant for a six-month study to track it using satellite data and try to predict its path as it drifts through the Southern Ocean.

“From the time it had been found that the crack had gone all the way across in July, it had stayed iced-in because it was still winter (in Antarctica),” said Grant Bigg from the University of Sheffield. 

“It often takes a while for bergs from this area to get out of Pine Island Bay but once they do that they can either go eastwards along the coast or they can circle out into the main part of the Southern Ocean.”

Bigg says it could drift into shipping lanes – or, it could stay in the south but melt, adding fresh water into the ocean.  If that keeps happening, the density of the water off Antarctica will change, and therefore so will regional currents.