Change in iceberg calving behaviour preceded disintegration of North Sea ice shelves during the last deglaciation

Understanding how regime shifts in iceberg calving behavior affect ice shelf stability remains a challenge for numerical models. This is an important question as we consider the fate of the ice shelves that currently buttress the Antarctic Ice Sheet and hold back the bulk of its potential upstream sea-level contribution. Using buried landforms, we demonstrate that ice shelves fringed the former British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) and document their disintegration ~18,000 years ago. The ice shelves produced massive (5–10 s km wide, 50–180 m thick) tabular icebergs until widespread ice shelf break-up shifted the calving regime to smaller bergs; a change that coincided with the collapse of marine-based ice across the central North Sea. We propose that the BIIS reached a climatic threshold around 18 ka which caused massive surface melting of its ice shelves, triggering hydrofracturing of crevasses that ultimately led to their disintegration and likely enhanced ice-retreat rates.