Doomsday!!! Petermann glacier iceberg has broken with the fractional area of ​​Manhattan

Thousands of these events occurred in Greenland calving every year, ranging from the mundane to the light. This latest calving is not use both in terms of size, with an area of 120 square km (46 sq mi), is about half the size of the iceberg that broke from the same glacier in 2010. Loomed much larger in the future outbreak of Pine Island Glacier is in Antarctica - which has demonstrated its 30km-long gap - hinting at the catastrophic events that will release an iceberg 800 miles square. Important to remember that this is a natural process and periodic been going on since long before we were here to take a satellite photo. What is at issue is whether the frequency of occurrence changed, and why.


Pine Island Glacier Pine Island Glacier satellite photos will eventually be cut loose iceberg 800sq km. One fact is that the margin of the Petermann glacier now retreated to a point not seen in the last 150 years. Another is that Greenland has more than two decades a warming of the atmosphere is much higher than the global average. Yet another is that during the same period, to the south of Greenland have seen the "missing mass" - both types look at Petermann calving and surface melting is simple - year on year increase.

And the level of Arctic sea ice cover - which literally can sustain several Greenland ice sheets - were on track to be the lowest ever recorded. But from there, into allegations that worrying about whether the same trends are heading north. Until now, we do not really see such a strong signal in the northern part of Greenland - and Petermann is right on the northern boundary of the ice sheet, said Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre at the University of Bristol.

Actually, the buildup and rupture of glaciers can change over timescales ranging from months to thousands of years, and scientists just have not been watching closely for a long time. As so often happens in science, more observations are needed. If we begin to see patterns the front of the calving glacier retreat in the range quite a few in northern Greenland in the same sector, then we would be very concerned - and it will be a strong indicator that there are changes that occur, associated with either warm up the atmosphere or ocean warming.

For now, glaciologists - working with the Earth and climate scientists of every stripe - are reluctant to make explicit the connection between the formation of icebergs and the wider debate around climate change, and this alarming trend is the place to come again. calving is the consequence of a marked warming of the atmosphere that has occurred in Greenland in recent decades, but it is certainly more likely to occur as a consequence of the warming.