Researchers on board the British Antarctic Survey’s RRS James Clark Ross have captured a major calving event as the William Glacier disintegrated into a thousand small pieces before their very eyes. William Glacier lies on the Antarctic Peninsula.
While such events have long been known to trigger tsunamis at the surface of the ocean, the calving event when analysed by the team revealed that the glacier calving can excite vigorous internal waves – a process that has been neglected in driving ocean mixing in computer models.
