Are we out of ice? Well not really, but we soon could be. British researchers recently reported that an iceberg about the size of Dubai, and about 70 storeys high, has broken away from an Antarctic ice shelf.

In 1993, Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey predicted that the northern part of Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if climate warming on the peninsula was to continue at the same rate. No-one expected it to happen so soon.

The BAS recently sent a small plane on a reconnaissance mission to check out the extent of the breakaway. Jim Elliott, who flew on board the plane to capture video footage of the break-up, said: “I’ve never seen anything like this before - it was awesome.

“We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they’ve been thrown around like rubble—it’s like an explosion.”

Satellite images have revealed that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins Shelf have been lost since the end of February, suggesting that climate change could be causing it to disintegrate much more quickly than scientists had predicted.

“The ice shelf is hanging by a thread,” said Professor Vaughan. “We’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

As the shelf is already afloat, it will not affect sea level, but Antarctica’s ice shelves act as buffers for land ice that could lead to dramatic changes in sea levels if it melts.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf covered an area of 16,000 square km, the size of Northern Ireland. It was stable for most of the last century but began retreating in the 1990s. A major breakaway occurred in 1998, when 1,000 square km of ice was lost in a few months.