With climate change wreaking havoc on Earth as we know it, it is hard to imagine a positive outcome from warming ocean temperatures, but the island of South Georgia’s penguins and seals are clapping their flippers at a positive turn of events for one very large iceberg.
When Iceberg A68a broke off from the Larsen arctic ice shelf in 2017, it was a whopping 100 miles long and 30 miles wide, one of the largest ever recorded. It drifted through the Arctic Ocean then south through the Atlantic until it reached the island of South Georgia near the Antarctic in 2020.
Oceanographers were concerned the iceberg would run into the coasts, and the penguin and seal populations rely on it for feeding, breeding and shelter. However, the iceberg circumvented this disaster when it struck the seafloor and began to break up before colliding with those important habitats. Although A68a resulted in a best-case scenario situation, future icebergs from the Arctic wall could have disastrous effects. Complacency is not the answer.
Scientists still don’t understand the effects almost 150 billion tons of fresh melt-water will have on the ecosystem of the area. The penguins are safe from direct impact for now but as the plankton population shifts in the wake of a drastic change in the water’s nutrient content, it could affect the fish populations as well, and inevitably the entire food chain.
Luckily A68a’s demise will not contribute further to rising sea levels because it already existed in water in the Arctic but the same can not be said for future icebergs of that size. Not only should we be concerned for marine life but also the well-being of coastal towns and the fish trade. Saltwater fish can not survive if too much freshwater brings down the salt concentration of their environment, meaning that much freshwater could deplete fish populations for generations, leading to less fish supply and higher prices for small coastal towns.
It’s possible for other icebergs to become grounded in the same area and block the ecosystem’s access to food, kill many of the organisms on the seafloor and flood the coast with the freshwater ice melt.
While the relatively minor consequences of such a large iceberg making its way across the Atlantic Ocean seems like a sign that the repercussions of climate change are overblown, it presents a false hope. Rather, A68a’s potential for impact should caution us even more to the dangers of our warming oceans. If we take this miraculous scenario as proof that climate change is not all that relevant, we ignore the crucial implication that one slight movement in any direction could have ended with a former glacier beached on South Georgia’s shore.
Action is desperately needed from international organizations to create a coordinated effort to reverse climate change’s effects or we could be seeing a lot more situations like A68a in the future. Warming ocean temperatures could lead to Antarctica’s eastern ice shelf shattering, it has the potential to raise its contribution to sea-level rise by as much as 25%.
Scientists warn that with “…global warming limited to 2 degrees Celsius or less, Antarctic ice loss will continue at a pace similar to today throughout the twenty-first century. However, scenarios more consistent with current policies give an abrupt jump in the pace of Antarctic ice loss after around 2060.”
Essentially, if policies continue as they are we are likely to see far worse consequences than a random iceberg here or there. Oceans will rise exponentially, destroying entire ecosystems with the inundation of fresh water. That is why international agreements like the Paris Climate Accords are so important. We need more international plans to lower carbon emissions and slow the speed of global warming if we want to have any chance to avoid further damage to our oceans. Much like the Titanic, being in the dark about the danger of free icebergs will lead to a rapidly sinking ship of climate change and volatile seas.
