Tides could help predict when huge icebergs break loose: study

Paris: Ocean tides can trigger city sized icebergs to break off from Antarctic ice shelves, scientists said on Thursday, offering a potential way to p...

Paris: Ocean tides can trigger city-sized icebergs to break off from Antarctic ice shelves, scientists said on Thursday, offering a potential way to predict these dramatic events in the future.

It is not normally possible to forecast when icebergs break free, or calve, although the timing is important because these behemoths change the shape of ice sheets and affect global sea levels.

Yet when a chunk of ice the size of Greater London suddenly broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in 2023 and started drifting away, glaciologist Oliver Marsh was not surprised.

Marsh told AFP he had predicted that a huge iceberg breaking off was "imminent within the next weeks to months".

The British Antarctic Survey researcher had spent years studying the huge crack that would create the 550-square-kilometre (210-square-mile) iceberg named A81.