Huge iceberg larger than New York City breaks off from Antarctica

An iceberg almost the size of the county of Bedfordshire has broken off the 150 metre Brunt Ice shelf near British research station, the British Antarctic Survey said on February 26. The research centre has remained unaffected as the station is closed for Antarctic winter. The iceberg measuring 1,270 square kilometres had broken off from the 150-meter-thick Brunt Ice Shelf in a process called "calving", according to British Antarctic Survey. 

Giant iceberg breaks off

The separation occurred just over 20 km from Britain's Halley research station. The British Antarctic Survey glaciologists had been expecting a big calving event for at least a decade. Adrian Luckman, British Glaciologist and professor of Geology at Swansea told BBC that breaking off of large parts of Antarctic ice shelves is normal but the one detected at Brunt Ice Shelf is rare and exciting for scientists. He added that we don't if the calving will break off some more pieces in future. He told that in Swansea University we study the iceberg and also all the activities related to iceberg like calving. 

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British Antarctic Survey monitoring the situation

According to Professor Dame Jane Francis, Director of British Antarctic Survey, “Our teams at BAS have been prepared for the calving of an iceberg from Brunt Ice Shelf for years. We monitor the ice shelf daily using an automated network of high-precision GPS instruments that surround the station, these measure how the ice shelf is deforming and moving. We also use satellite images from ESA, NASA and the German satellite TerraSAR-X. All the data are sent back to Cambridge for analysis, so we know what’s happening even in the Antarctic winter, when there are no staff on the station, it’s pitch black, and the temperature falls below minus 50 degrees C (or -58F)."

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