Breakaway iceberg raises concerns over Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier

A massive iceberg that has been stuck on the seafloor in front of the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica for two decades and helped protect it is now floating away

By Michael Le Page

A massive iceberg that was helping to slow the loss of floating ice from the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica has come unstuck.

The iceberg, roughly 85 kilometres (53 miles) long and 64 kilometres (40 miles) wide, originally broke away from the floating ice shelf formed by the glacier in March 2002, but got stuck in a shallow part of the Amundsen Sea around 100 kilometres away.

Its presence had been helping to anchor sea ice – formed by the freezing of …