Researchers are monitoring a glacier the size of Mahanttan off the coast of Antarctica, which may interfere with international shipping lanes.
According to BBC News, UK researchers were given an "emergency grant" of £50,000 to follow the iceberg's movements for six months. It is estimated at about 700 sq km (270 sq miles). The iceberg reportedly broke away from the Pine Island Glacier in July.
"The primary reason to monitor the iceberg is that it's very large. An iceberg that size could survive for a year or longer and it could drift a long way north in that time and end up in the vicinity of world shipping lanes in the Southern Ocean," Dr Robert Marsh, co-manager of the six-month project from the University of Southampton, told Sky News.
"There's a lot of activity to and from the Antarctic Peninsula, and ships could potentially cross paths with this large iceberg, although it would be an unusual coincidence," Marsh added.
Principal investigator Grant Bigg from the University of Sheffield told BBC the iceberg has the potential to bring Manhattan-sized "ice island" to into "busy international shipping lanes."
"Its current movement does not raise environmental issues, However, a previous giant iceberg from this location eventually entered the South Atlantic and if this happens it could potentially pose a hazard to ships," Biggs told Sky News.
"If the iceberg stays around the Antarctic coast, it will melt slowly and will eventually add a lot of freshwater that stays in the coastal current, altering the density and affecting the speed of the current," he added.
However, Biggs told BBC part of the six-month project would be dedicated to simulating the iceberg's path and movements to help predict what it might do.
According to Sky News, the iceberg was first discovered by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research using the German Space Agency's earth observation satellite TerraSAR-X.
