The massive Antarctic ice sheets might have a few years left in them yet, but the floating ice shelves which project out into the oceans are causing problems today.
Scientists have been keeping an eye on one particularly large chunk of ice measuring 48 miles long by 24 miles wide, about the same size as Co Clare and more than three times the size of Co Dublin.
The enormous iceberg, if that is a suitably large enough word to use for such a piece of ice, broke off the Thwaites glacier of Antarctica in 1992 and has been drifting on ocean currents ever since.
B10A, to give it its official name, extends about 300 feet above the water's surface and is estimated to reach about 1,000 feet underwater. It broke in half in 1995 and smaller bits are falling off all the time as it moves about and melts away. It has been tracked for years because of the substantial risk it poses to international shipping.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is keeping an eye on B10A using a new orbiting radar instrument called Sea Winds, flying on board the QuikScat satellite.
It can monitor pieces down to 2.5 square miles in size from its perch above the planet. Despite its size, B10A was "lost" earlier this year and a ship was dispatched to try to find it. It wasn't relocated until the SeaWinds device was switched on last July.
At that time it was heading north-east between Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic Peninsula.
"Although the iceberg isn't posing a threat to ships in the area right now, pieces of B10A could be blown back into the shipping lane and become a danger to ships using the Antarctic's Drake Passage," stated Dr David Long, a member of the SeaWinds science team from Utah's Brigham Young University.
Although it took thousands of years to form, it could be gone by the end of this year as it drifts into warmer waters.