The world's largest iceberg, A23a, is moving into the open waters near Antarctica after being essentially stuck in place for decades. It's seen here in satellite imagery from Nov. 15.
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European Union/Copernicus Sentinel-3
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via Reuters
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Ships plying the frigid waters near the Antarctic Peninsula, south of South America, will need to keep an eye on their radar for a floating island of ice: "The largest iceberg in the world, A-23a, is on the move into open ocean!" as the British Antarctic Survey recently announced.
The size: Iceberg A23a measures 40 by 32 nautical miles, according to the U.S. National Ice Center. For comparison, Hawaii's island of Oahu is 44 miles long and 30 miles across. And New York City's Manhattan Island is about 13.4 miles long and spans around 2.3 miles at its widest point.
The backstory: When A23a was still part of an ice shelf, it held a Soviet research station — and it whisked that base off to sea when it floated away in the 1980s. The iceberg then became grounded on the seafloor. But in recent years, it has been on the move again, after shaking loose. Little by little, the iceberg kept scouring a path over the seafloor and toward deeper water, nudged by currents, the wind and other factors. A breakthrough came in 2020, when the main bulk of A23a freed itself and started to pivot clockwise on its southeast corner. Before long, it was moving in earnest.
How far will it go: Most icebergs emerging from the Weddell Sea tend to drift slightly eastward toward South Georgia, some 1,000 miles east of the tip of South America. If A23a doesn't get hung up in shallow and warmer waters, Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder said, "it could wind up drifting south of Africa into the Indian Ocean. They've even drifted all the way into the Pacific and wound up coming up on Chile, almost circumnavigating the globe. Some of the largest icebergs have done that in the past."
Ships plying the frigid waters near the Antarctic Peninsula, south of South America, will need to keep an eye on their radar for a floating island of ice: "The largest iceberg in the world, A-23a, is on the move into open ocean!" as the British Antarctic Survey recently announced.
"It's a trillion tons of ice. So it's hard to comprehend just how big a patch of ice this is," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, told NPR.
Iceberg A23a measures 40 by 32 nautical miles, according to the U.S. National Ice Center. For comparison, Hawaii's island of Oahu is 44 miles long and 30 miles across. And New York City's Manhattan Island is about 13.4 miles long and spans around 2.3 miles at its widest point.
When A23a was still part of an ice shelf, it held a Soviet research station — and it whisked that base off to sea when it floated away in the 1980s (more on that below). The iceberg then became grounded on the seafloor. But in recent years, it has been on the move again, after shaking loose.
Here's a quick recap of the iceberg, its history and its potential future:
It's the world's biggest iceberg
A23a hasn't always held the title. In 2021, for instance, it was supplanted by iceberg A-76, which broke from the Ronne Ice Shelf, also in the Weddell Sea. But that giant soon fractured into smaller icebergs, putting A23a back into the top spot.
"It's truly a gargantuan piece of ice," Scambos said, noting that the iceberg is likely 1,000 to 1,200 feet thick.
Its roots stretch to the austral winter of 1986, when the Filchner Ice Shelf's leading edge broke off to calve three huge icebergs: A22, A23 and A24. In late 1991, A23a became a separate iceberg.
A23a was grounded for decades
Recent satellite images have shown the migration of the mammoth iceberg known as A23a from its origins in the Weddell Sea to its current position on the edge of the open ocean.
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Worldview/NASA Earth Observing System/Screenshot by NPR
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If icebergs were humans, A23a would be a millennial. And like members of that generation who have sometimes been forced to stay home by harsh economic conditions, the iceberg has spent most of its independent existence grounded, stuck to a sandbank in shallow waters.
Little by little, the iceberg kept scouring a path over the seafloor and toward deeper water, nudged by currents, the wind and other factors. A breakthrough came in 2020, when the main bulk of A23a freed itself and started to pivot clockwise on its southeast corner. Before long, it was moving in earnest.
It took ice station Druzhnaya 1 out to sea
A map shows the locations of research stations in Antarctica, focusing on the coast of the Weddell Sea.
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U.S. Geological Survey
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Over the decades, the Filchner Ice Shelf has hosted several countries' research and mapping stations. For about 10 years, that included a Soviet station called Druzhnaya 1.
"When the A23 iceberg calved and floated off" in 1986, "Druzhnaya 1 was still on it," according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
In February 1987, a Soviet ship, the Kapitan Kondratyev, tracked the iceberg down and deployed a landing party aboard a helicopter "to salvage the most valuable equipment from the station," as researchers noted in a recent academic paper.
Life can get weird on an iceberg
If you were to set foot on A23a, Scambos said, you likely wouldn't realize it's an iceberg, floating loose at sea. Its scale would simply fill the horizon; any movement would be imperceptible. He should know. He has camped on icebergs before.
He recalls one odd thing: the disorientation.
"The ice that the base was built on would start to rotate, and that would make the sun do funny things in the sky," Scambos said. "It wouldn't be where it's supposed to be in the morning or in the evening or at night — even though it's 24 hours of daylight."
Over the years, he has heard from people who want to visit an iceberg. And Scambos says that while some of their goals were outlandish (as in, people hoping to declare unilateral sovereignty over an ice kingdom), a gigantic iceberg like A23a is pretty stable — with a big caveat.
"It's not impossible to land on it," Scambos said. "I mean, the upper surface is going to be smooth and snowy and relatively safe, at least for now."
But as the iceberg drifts north and finds warmer conditions, melting and flooding will begin.
"Eventually it will start to crack apart fairly rapidly towards the end," he said. "You wouldn't want to be on it at the end, because the whole thing would be breaking off in pieces and falling into the ocean."
If that happens to A23a, it could run aground again near South Georgia. But other icebergs, like its sibling A24, have moved more directly north, toward the Falkland Islands.
"Usually they're in the process of breaking up at that point," Scambos said, "although this one is likely to survive longer than most because it came from a colder part of Antarctica" and is thick, along with having a heavy buildup of snowfall.
If A23a doesn't get hung up in shallow and warmer waters, he added, "it could wind up drifting south of Africa into the Indian Ocean. They've even drifted all the way into the Pacific and wound up coming up on Chile, almost circumnavigating the globe. Some of the largest icebergs have done that in the past."
You can learn a lot from an iceberg
Massive icebergs like A23a scrape and scour the seafloor in shallow waters.
"There's a lot of life that lives in the bottom of the ocean that is just completely crushed, wrecked, when one of these things passes over," Scambos said. "That's it for the ecosystem that lives in that part of the ocean."
But the icebergs also give scientists an idea of the changes wrought when massive plates of ice, formed in the coldest parts of the world, suddenly find themselves in warmer conditions.
"The main scientific source of interest for the iceberg is sampling ocean surface waters behind, near, and just ahead of it," Em Newton of the British Antarctic Survey said of A23a, in a message to NPR. Researchers, she added, want "to understand the effects of temperature, changes to salinity, released nutrients, etc., along its path."
This part of the Southern Ocean is normally very poor in nutrients. An iceberg like A23a, Scambos says, can help change that by shedding nutrients it accumulated from Antarctica and stirring up deep water, possibly sparking a plankton bloom in its wake.
What about climate change?
News of the iceberg's peregrination comes after record warm temperatures and low levels of sea ice have been recorded around Antarctica in recent years.
And in September, researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported the lowest winter maximum extent of Antarctic sea ice. It was found to be nearly 400,000 square miles below the previous low, set in 1986.
"But despite several recent years of low extents, the long-term trend for sea ice in southern polar waters is essentially flat," the NASA Earth Observatory said, adding, "it is the declines in sea ice at the other pole — in the Arctic — that are pushing the global sea ice trend downward."
Scambos agrees, noting that A23a came from a part of Antarctica that is fairly stable.
"These big icebergs are spectacular, but they're just the way Antarctica works. This is how an ice sheet works. It gathers snow, and the snow thickens and flows off into the ocean, and then pieces break off. And in Antarctica, those pieces are really, really large," he said.
"But the more important thing for people to be aware of is that Antarctica in other places is losing ice very rapidly," Scambos said, describing a dynamic that contributes to rising sea levels.
"And that actually is a much more serious problem."
Kavish Harjai
was in the LAist studios listening to the forum Thursday night.
Published September 3, 2026 7:50 PM
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman separately explain their environmental positions at a mayoral forum held Thursday at L.A. Trade Tech in downtown Los Angeles.
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LAist
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Topline:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass painted herself as a proven fighter for environmental justice issues. Her challenger, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, said progress on environmental goals has stalled in City Hall.
Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.
Here are some of the topics they covered:
Extreme heat
Emergency preparedness and recovery
Protecting communities from pollution
Water
Public transit
LAist will have more coverage and analysis of the conversations Friday morning.
Topline:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described herself as a proven fighter for environmental justice issues. Her challenger, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, said progress on environmental goals has stalled in City Hall.
Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.
Ahead of election, Trump admin still has big plans
By Jude Joffe-Block | NPR
Published September 3, 2026 6:43 PM
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Scott Olson
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Getty Images
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Topline:
The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election.
About the timing: Trump officials will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.
Where things stand: Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.
Why this matters: The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.
The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election. But it will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.
Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.
The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.
The basis for the federal government creating state citizenship lists is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. A lower court had blocked implementation of key parts of that executive order in 23 states and Washington, D.C., but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction late last month, opening the door for the plan to be implemented after all.
The March 31 executive order directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create "State Citizenship Lists" of individuals the agencies believe are citizens in each state, and send those lists to state officials "no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election."
The next section of the executive order says the U.S. attorney general will prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local officials who issue federal ballots to anyone not eligible to vote.
"States here have a strong incentive to actually use these lists to try to avoid federal investigation," said Jules Torti, counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, in an interview with NPR. "But we know that these lists are going to be based on really inaccurate data. So the risk of disenfranchisement here is really, really palpable."
The privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, along with individual voters, filed a motion Thursday asking a federal judge in Maryland to block the administration from creating the citizenship lists and publishing them on a portal. Specifically, they seek to block a June 8 implementation memo authored by USCIS director Joseph Edlow that outlines the plan.
The motion, which was brought by Protect Democracy, along with another nonprofit legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues the administration's plans to share Americans' personal data between agencies and then disseminate the data to states violates multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the Privacy Act, federal agencies must give the public 30 days notice and the opportunity to comment before they collect and disseminate Americans' personal data for a new purpose.
The EPIC lawsuit also argues the government does not have access to accurate, up-to-date information on American citizens, especially those who move frequently, have changed their names, or are foreign-born. For example, Social Security's citizenship data often isn't updated when people naturalize, and the SAVE data system, operated by USCIS, frequently doesn't include records for people who became citizens as minors when their parents naturalized.
Torti said it is "deeply concerning" that the administration is still planning to go ahead with the creation of citizenship lists but is no longer going to meet the deadline, since that means the lists will be completed even closer to Election Day.
"It means additional chaos, additional confusion for the state election officials and just for voters," Torti said. "And I think that's the point. The point here is to create chaos in advance of the election."
Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with compiling the citizenship lists, responded to NPR's request for comment.
The June 8 implementation memo stated that the portal for state election officials would be available around June 30 and a second portal where citizens could check their information would be available at a later date – but that deadline passed without further updates.
The federal government has secured a domain for the state citizenship lists portal. While the portal is not currently online, it was briefly live in recent days with a landing page that said "Coming Soon," according to court filings.
Lawyers representing Democratic party groups that had challenged the March 31 executive order in a separate lawsuit filed in April, accused the administration in a recent filing of failing to notify the court or the parties about its plans to move forward with the state citizenship portal. They asked the judge to require the federal government to give immediate updates about their plans to implement the executive order.
This latest legal battle over the administration's plans to compile state citizenship lists comes as the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up its efforts to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of identifying potential noncitizens who are registered to vote. Previous audits have found instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be incredibly rare.
Additionally, last week, ICE published a request for information on a federal procurement site seeking vendors who can compile public voter rolls and voter history files from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, "to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities."
NPR's Hansi Lo Wang contributed reporting to this story. Copyright 2026 NPR
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A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.
About the proposed land exchange: The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.
Why it matters: A bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties argues that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.
A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.
The letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday was signed by a bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
“Republicans and Democrats from both houses of the Legislature are standing together because some things are bigger than politics,” Wallis said in a statement. “Yosemite is not a subdivision. It is not a bargaining chip. And it is not for sale. Secretary Burgum and the administration should put an end to this proposal.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (center) visited the Tunnel Tops in San Francisco in 2025 after he and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi toured Alcatraz ahead of their announcement to reopen the former federal prison.
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Katie DeBenedetti
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KQED
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The group argued that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.
“What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later,” the letter states.
It continues later: “Our national parks belong equally to every American. They are not the Department’s to trade away, and they are not for sale.”
The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.
Previous owners have pushed for the same deal since the early 2000s and failed in court.
State Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who signed on to the letter, called the proposal “indefensible,” and said he’s looking at state laws to ensure a similar proposal could never slip through.
“If the Trump administration can’t defend this publicly in broad daylight, then they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Marin) told KQED’s Forum on Wednesday that he’s worried there isn’t enough opposition among his Republican colleagues in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s efforts.
“I have not seen a single Republican colleague willing to stand up to Donald Trump when he decides that he’s just going to do something,” Huffman said. “So that is my concern, that he just plows ahead with this — even if it has dubious legal authority, or even if it’s an open violation of the law. He’s doing stuff like that anyway. And in this Congress, there’s no one here to stop him.”
In a statement to KQED, state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil (R-Modesto), whose district includes parts of Yosemite, said she will “keep pressing the Department [of the Interior] for a clear answer that this exchange will not proceed.”
“The secretive backroom land-exchange scheme has gotten everyone’s attention,” said Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “I can’t recall another issue — and I’ve been working in the conservation space for over a couple of decades — where the response has been this sharp and so one-sided that this is a terrible idea that should not happen.”
The backlash comes at a turbulent time for National Park Service employees, who have faced layoffs,staffing cuts and fear of retaliation for speaking up against Trump administration policies since the start of the second Trump administration.
Some former employees have also raised concerns about a potential reorganization of the National Park Service, according to a separate letter sent to Burgum’s office Wednesday. According to an email seen by KQED, park superintendents have been asked to attend in-person regional meetings in September — with no clear agenda beyond discussing “agency priorities, our FY 2026 outlook, and other matters important to the work ahead.”
The letter to Burgam, signed by 20 retired parks superintendents warns: “An ill-advised and hastily planned reorganization could dismantle that structure, putting our parks — and those who visit them — at great risk.”
Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, which organized the letter, said the email about regional meetings “raises some alarm bells.”
“The Park Service is already operating from a difficult place, from a place of crisis,” she said. “And any additional cuts, any movements or actions that would further jeopardize the capacity of the folks that are left, that’s concerning. It’s worrying, and it’ll have a devastating impact on the Park Service.”
Among the letter’s signatories is Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, who has been a vocal advocate for parks amid the Trump administration’s changes.
Thompson said she’s worried parks leaders will be stretched even further than they already are, and local decision-making over parks could be in jeopardy.
“Morale is low,” Thompson said. “It’s a hard time to be a federal employee. Anything that … contributes to this culture of fear, it’s just not acceptable.”
A file photo of an East Village restaurant that was vandalized on Thursday, June 6, 2024.
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Long Beach Post
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Topline:
Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.
More details: Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.
How it works: The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.
Read on... for more on how to qualify for these grants in Long Beach.
Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.
The grant program is accepting online applications now. You can apply here.
Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.
Nonprofit organizations are eligible as well, and landlords can apply on behalf of commercial storefronts that are vacant or occupied. Franchises can also receive the grant.
To qualify, a business must:
Have an active business license for a storefront within the city
Be independently owned and operated (franchises are eligible)
Be currently open and active for business
Earn no more than $5 million in annual gross revenue
Hold “active” status with the California Secretary of State for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships
The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.
It’s a great idea, according to Edwin Jara, who manages a pet store in Belmont Heights and was on the receiving end of a break-in earlier this year.
His store had security measures already in place — two cameras and an alarm system — but even that wasn’t enough to deter a masked burglar who grabbed $1,000 cash and a handful of dog treats.
Despite having footage of the burglar, Jara said police haven’t been able to catch the person and that a detective never responded after he filed a police report.
The grant program is being paid for with $350,000 from the city’s Redvelopment Agency along with $50,000 from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office.
“Our local small businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and when business owners feel unsafe, the whole community feels it,” Hahn said in a statement.
In a statement, Mayor Rex Richardson said the program is a “direct investment in the hardworking business owners who make our commercial corridors vibrant and welcoming.”
Jara said he would consider applying for a grant if the city could send someone to help him and the store’s owner fill out the application.
He was offered a separate grant to replace a glass door the burglar smashed, but the store’s owner opted not to fill out the application.
“There was a lot of stuff that we needed to do, and I don’t have a lot of that information,” Jara said.
