This is the second major calving in the area in the past two years. The floating ice shelf flows at a rate of up to 2km per year west towards the sea and calves off icebergs regularly. The station sits on Antarctica’s up to 150m-thick Brunt Ice Shelf. Two years after Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf seemed poised to produce a berg twice the size of New York City, the ice is still hanging on. Their work will continue until they are collected by aircraft on about February 6. The world’s largest iceberg has calved from Antarctica over the past few days, a giant floating piece of ice close to 80 times the size of Manhattan. Staff at the station maintain power supplies and facilities that keep the scientific experiments operating remotely through the winter. Since 2017, staff have been deployed to the station only during the Antarctic summer, from November to March. In 2016, BAS relocated the Halley Research Station 23km inland of Chasm-1 after it began to widen. “All data are sent back to Cambridge for analysis, so we know what is happening even in the Antarctic winter - when there are no staff on the station, it is dark for 24 hours and the temperature falls below minus 50☌.” Research station relocated “These measure how the ice shelf is deforming and moving and are compared to satellite images from ESA, Nasa and the German satellite TerraSAR-X. “Measurements of the ice shelf are carried out multiple times a day using an automated network of high-precision GPS instruments that surround the station,” she said.

Antarctica iceberg breaks