World's largest iceberg disintegrates into 'alphabet soup,' NASA photo shows

Eleven fragments of the once-mighty iceberg A-68a swirl around South Georgia island, north of Antarctica (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

The ocean north of Antarctica has turned into an "alphabet soup" of broken icebergs, according to a new blog post on NASA's Earth Observatory website.

In a satellite photo snapped on Feb. 11, 2021, the jagged outlines of 11 fractured icebergs swirl around a remote, penguin-filled island called South Georgia, located about 940 miles (1,500 kilometers) northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Each frozen chunk is a piece of the once-mighty iceberg A-68a, which held the title of world's largest iceberg for more than three years before shattering into a dozen pieces a few weeks ago. Now, each broken bit of the puzzle has its own name, beginning with A-68b, and ending with A-68M. (Several of the icebergs are not visible in this photo.)

Iceberg A-68a originally broke off of Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf on July 12, 2017. At the time, it measured more than 2,300 square miles (6,000 square kilometers) — large enough to hold the five boroughs of New York City five times over. Despite its impressive surface area, the berg was incredibly thin, and it began losing large chunks of ice beginning in April 2020.

Fortunately, the berg changed course and began drifting around the island, even before it shattered into the dozen-or-so chunks bobbing around the area today. The threat to the island's animals is over for now.