Big berg breaks off

A giant iceberg estimated to be 200 kilometres long has broken off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. “That’s up among the big ones,” says Christopher Doake from the British Antarctic Survey. “You’d expect ones of that size every 20 or 30 years or so.” The breakaway, spotted by the Antarctica Meteorological Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last week, brings the shelf back down to the size it was in 1911 when Robert Scott’s team first mapped it. Despite the iceberg’s size, researchers suspect it is just a normal part of the shelf’s “calving” process.