| A few questions: * How long will it take for "Deleware" to melt? * Is ocean ice this large called an iceberg? * Does is get an official name, like IIS Wilmington (international ice station, capital of Deleware)? * Have large ice sheets in the past forced/caused changes in human behavior, such as altering shipping lanes, in the same way planes fly around a storm? |
Potentially a very long time, although it will likely break into smaller pieces first. A lot of icebergs get caught in the Antarctic Coastal Current, and just drift around the edge of Antarctica, not melting very much at all. Over time, most of them break free and drift north into warmer waters and melt, but others stick around. Iceberg B-9, which calved in 1987, still has a few chunks sitting around.
> * Is ocean ice this large called an iceberg?
Yes. You'll sometimes see the bigger bergs described as "ice islands", but that's just a subcategory of iceberg.
> * Does is get an official name, like IIS Wilmington (international ice station, capital of Deleware)?
It'll get a numeric designation, A-nn, where A indicates which quadrant of Antarctica it originated from (in this case 0-90W) and nn is a sequential number, probably in the high sixties depending on whether any other large bergs calve first. Then, as it breaks up, the resulting bergs will get letters added to the name, A-nnA, A-nnB, etc.
> * Have large ice sheets in the past forced/caused changes in human behavior, such as altering shipping lanes, in the same way planes fly around a storm?
In 2005, B-15A blocked the entrance to McMurdo Sound, where the main US and New Zealand Antarctic bases are located, and they were unable to get cargo ships in for a few weeks. And of course, ships are redirected around icebergs in the open ocean all the time.