A recent study reveals that massive, flat-topped icebergs, similar in size to cities like Cambridge or Norwich, drifted off the coast of Britain during the last ice age, offering insights into the potential impacts of the climate crisis on Antarctica. These icebergs, several kilometers wide and hundreds of meters thick, left distinctive grooves on the North Sea floor between Scotland and Norway roughly 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) discovered these grooves in seismic survey data from the Witch Ground basin near Aberdeen, Scotland. The parallel grooves allowed scientists to estimate the immense size of these tabular icebergs.
The study, published in Nature Communications, highlights a shift from large tabular icebergs to smaller ones as ice shelves disintegrated. This mirrors the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica, providing valuable clues about the stability of present-day Antarctic ice sheets. According to Dr. James Kirkham, lead author of the study, analyzing the collapse of these ancient ice shelves could enhance our understanding of ice shelf influence on the modern Antarctic ice sheet.