As a view out of your home it’s hard to match — a constantly changing vista of icebergs just outside the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera research station.

Every day the winds and tides on the Antarctic Peninsula shift them around — some break up  abruptly with a loud splash while many simply slowly grind into ice cubes against the shore and disappear. I’ve tried to take a picture every day from the main balcony here (there’s a metal mast on the right hand side of each photo).

Walking along the shore here you can hear a bubbling as air in the ice melts out into the water. The old ice is the clearest — good for putting in cold drinks. Some form gravity-defying shapes such as arches or big holes — one in the bay a few days ago looked like a giant catamaran.

Icebergs cracking off glaciers in the distance can sound like an artillery shell exploding and big lumps falling into the sea send a wave across the bay. Seals lie on the beach, some of them snoring or nonchalantly scratching themselves — completely unbothered by the people passing by.

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A yellow robot submarine will dive under an ice shelf in Antarctica to seek clues to world ocean level rises in one of the most inaccessible places on earth, reports our environment correspondent Alister Doyle. You can see his story here.

The 7-meter (22 ft) submarine, to be launched from a U.S. research vessel, will probe the underside of the ice at the end of the Pine Island glacier, which is moving faster than any other in Antarctica and already brings more water to the oceans than Europe’s Rhine River.

Scientists have long observed vast icebergs breaking off Antarctica’s ice shelves - extensions of glaciers floating on the sea - but have been unable to get beneath them to see how deep currents may be driving the melt from below.

 At Pine Island, the thinning of the shelf seems to be linked to a shift in deep ocean currents that are bringing warmer water from the depths; further north, several ice shelves have disintegrated in recent years apparently because of a warming of air temperatures that may be linked to global warming.

Scientists are going to the ends of the earth to monitor the possible effects of climate change. Watch this space for more reporting and discussion of their efforts.

(Photo: The yellow sub is readied for action. REUTERS/Alister Doyle, Jan 6, 2009)