Powered By Pixels
01 March 2021

This iceberg, as large as London, just broke off Antarctica close to British research base

01 March 2021

An iceberg almost the size of Greater London has split off from Antarctica.

The incident took place just over 20km from Britain’s Halley research station, which was happily uninhabited at the time.

The iceberg, which measures 1,270 sq km and is 150-metre-thick broke off from the Brunt Ice Shelf on Friday.

The British Antarctic Survey captured footage of large cracks in the shelf earlier in the month.

Adrian Luckman, British glaciologist and professor of geology at Swansea University in Wales, said: “Although the breaking off of large parts of Antarctic ice shelves is an entirely normal part of how they work, large calving events such as the one detected at the Brunt Ice Shelf on Friday remain quite rare and exciting.

He told the BBC: “With three long rifts actively developing on the Brunt Ice Shelf system over the last five years, we have all been anticipating that something spectacular was going to happen.”

The best videos delivered daily

Watch the stories that matter, right from your inbox