Giant Phallus-Shaped Iceberg Spotted off Newfoundland Coast: Starstruck Photographer Finds It Hilarious, Awesome

An oddly shaped iceberg resembling a giant phallus off the coast of Dildo, Newfoundland, garnered significant attention before it disintegrated.

People Who Often Visit Iceberg Alley

The funny-shaped iceberg was caught by photographer Ken Pretty near Harbour Grace, which is on Conception Bay. What locals called the funny structure the "dickie berg" quickly went viral. The 30-foot building had a column with a dome-shaped top sticking out of two oval ice formations. It got attention from all over the world and made many people laugh.

The coast of Newfoundland, especially Iceberg Alley, is famous for the annual parade of icebergs. Every spring, old glaciers from the North Atlantic and the Greenland ice sheets melt and break off, drifting southward.

Iceberg Alley turns into a gallery of nature's art, showing off huge icebergs in various exciting forms. People from all over the world come to this area to wonder at these icy giants.

According to the Newfoundland and Labrador website, 90% of the 400-800 icebergs that travel throughout Iceberg Alley each year originate from Greenland's glaciers. The Arctic Ocean is home to the remainder. This area is famous for having a lot of icebergs because it is close to where the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg in 1912.

In the past few years, large groups of people have been going to see icebergs with strange forms, like the 150-foot-tall iceberg that was seen in 2016. To help people find these nice visitors, the city government made a website called Iceberg Finder.

Melting Glaciers: A Sign of Global Warming

The iceberg's strange shape hides a more significant problem: glaciers are melting faster than they can freeze because of climate change. A study from the University of Copenhagen says that Greenland's glaciers are melting five times faster than they did twenty years ago.

The fast dissolution is because of the rise in world temperature, which is now about 1.2°C (2.2°F) higher than before the Industrial Revolution. It will be 125,000 years since the last warm year.

The melting of Greenland's ice sheet would cause sea levels to rise by at least 20 feet, which is terrible. A University of Copenhagen assistant professor, Anders Anker Bjork, clarified that increasing temperatures and faster glacier melting are linked. Using satellite images and old shots to look at a thousand glaciers over 130 years showed that glaciers are losing 25 meters of height yearly, up from 5-6 meters every 20 years.

Much work should be put into lowering greenhouse gas emissions to reduce world temperatures. If these actions are not done, ice will keep melting more quickly, according to Jørgen Eivind Olesen, head of the Climate Institute at Aarhus University. Senior researcher William Colgan of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland discussed the need to monitor Greenland's glaciers to predict how climate change will affect the world.

The Greenland ice sheet is a big reason sea levels have risen. From 2006 to 2018, it was responsible for 17.3% of the rise. Greenland has about 22,000 glaciers; if they keep melting, it could significantly affect sea levels worldwide.

The giant phallus-shaped iceberg near Dildo, Newfoundland, was a funny and fantastic sight that didn't last long. But it was also a stark warning of how global warming still affects our planet's glaciers and how fast it is getting worse. As climate change continues to change the world, it may become more common to see strange ice forms. This shows how important it is for everyone to act immediately to stop the climate crisis.