Paris: An iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier in February could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said on Thursday.While the impact would not be felt for decades or longer, a slowdown in the production of colder, dense water could result in less temperate winters in the north Atlantic, they said.The 2,550 square-kilometre block broke off on February 12 or 13 from the Mertz Glacier Tongue, a 160-kilometre spit of floating ice protruding into the Southern Ocean from East Antarctica due south of Melbourne, researchers said. Some 400 metres thick, the iceberg could fill Sydney Harbour more than 100 times over. It could also disturb the area’s exceptionally rich biodiversity, including a major colony of emperor penguins near Dumont d’Urville, site of a French scientific station, according to the scientists.“The ice tongue was almost broken already. It was hanging like a loose tooth,” said Benoit Legresy, a French glaciologist who has been monitoring the Metz Glacier via satellite images and on the ground for a decade in cooperation with Australian scientists.The billion-tonne mass, 78 kilometres long and half-again as wide, was dislodged by another, older iceberg, known as B9B, which split off in 1987. —AFP