Antarctic: ‘No role’ for climate in Halley iceberg splitting

Scientists Jan De Rydt and Hilmar Gudmundsson have spent years studying the area and say the calving will be the result of natural processes only. The Antarctic station, which sits on a floating platform of ice, was moved in 2017 to get it away from a large chasm. That crack is now expected to dump a berg the size of Greater London into the Weddell Sea. It’s not clear precisely when this will happen, but the breakaway looks imminent, prompting the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to withdraw its staff from Halley as a precaution. As soon as the calving does occur, though, it can be guaranteed that one of the first questions everyone will ask is: what was the influence of climate change? And the Northumbria University team believes it will be able to answer with high confidence: “There was none.” Jan De Rydt and Hilmar Gudmundsson have built a model to describe the behaviour of the floating ice platform, which is known as the Brunt Ice Shelf. Read more.