British scientists say the world’s largest iceberg has stopped spinning in place for months and is drifting north again in the Southern Ocean. They think it will eventually leave the Southern Ocean and enter the Atlantic Ocean, where it will encounter warm water and melt.

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the world’s largest iceberg is named A23a. It covers an area of 3,800 square kilometers, which is twice the size of Greater London. It is 400 meters thick and weighs nearly 1 trillion tons.

A23a collapsed from the Antarctic ice shelf in 1986 and was stranded in the Weddell Sea (one of Antarctica’s continental seas) for more than thirty years. It began to move slowly northward in 2020, but in April this year After being stuck in a whirlpool for months near the South Orkney Islands, it has now regained its freedom and continues to drift north.