Greenland glacier calves island 4 times the size of Manhattan, UD scientist reports it last happened at this scale in 1962. Must have been climate change back then too. Watch the media now as this story is only about an hour old. BTW it fractured, not melted, and in case some people forget: glaciers calve to the sea there, it is what they do. – Anthony
1:40 p.m., Aug. 6, 2010—-A University of Delaware researcher reports that an “ice island” four times the size of Manhattan has calved from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier. The last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk of ice was in 1962.
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Here is a NASA Image of the day from August 30th, 2007 – Anthony:
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“In the early morning hours of August 5, 2010, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan was born in northern Greenland,” said Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. Muenchow’s research in Nares Strait, between Greenland and Canada, is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Satellite imagery of this remote area at 81 degrees N latitude and 61 degrees W longitude, about 620 miles [1,000 km] south of the North Pole, reveals that Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 43-mile long [70 km] floating ice-shelf.
Trudy Wohlleben of the Canadian Ice Service discovered the ice island within hours after NASA’s MODIS-Aqua satellite took the data on Aug. 5, at 8:40 UTC (4:40 EDT), Muenchow said. These raw data were downloaded, processed, and analyzed at the University of Delaware in near real-time as part of Muenchow’s NSF research. Petermann Glacier, the parent of the new ice island, is one of the two largest remaining glaciers in Greenland that terminate in floating shelves.
The glacier connects the great Greenland ice sheet directly with the ocean. The new ice island has an area of at least 100 square miles and a thickness up to half the height of the Empire State Building. “The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years. It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days,” Muenchow said.
The island will enter Nares Strait, a deep waterway between northern Greenland and Canada where, since 2003, a University of Delaware ocean and ice observing array has been maintained by Muenchow with collaborators in Oregon (Prof. Kelly Falkner), British Columbia (Prof. Humfrey Melling), and England (Prof. Helen Johnson). “In Nares Strait, the ice island will encounter real islands that are all much smaller in size,” Muenchow said. “The newly born ice-island may become land-fast, block the channel, or it may break into smaller pieces as it is propelled south by the prevailing ocean currents. From there, it will likely follow along the coasts of Baffin Island and Labrador, to reach the Atlantic within the next two years.”
The last time such a massive ice island formed was in 1962 when Ward Hunt Ice Shelf calved a 230 square-mile island, smaller pieces of which became lodged between real islands inside Nares Strait. Petermann Glacier spawned smaller ice islands in 2001 (34 square miles) and 2008 (10 square miles). In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf disintegrated and became an ice island (34 square miles) about 60 miles to the west of Petermann Fjord.
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UPDATE: At 2:15 PM I added an Aqua sat image (source here) in visible light with rotation to North and annotation at the head of this article. – Anthony
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If only Manhattan would calve off an island the size of Manhattan and float out to sea to melt…
EDIT: I see everybody else already thought of my jokes today…
Why do I have this mental image of Al Gore, et. al. (Gore in his bath robe, ala massage-gate) strategically planting explosives to speed up the calving? (Can someone pass the ice pick to get Al Gore’s image out of my head.) : ))
Would that make a good Friday Funny? (Al Gore in his bath robe planting explosives on a glacier, not me with an ice pick.)
fp says:
August 6, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Most of the oceans haven’t yet received the news, and are growing colder as we speak.
Better yet, the Ice Shelf is floating north, not south.
The last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk of ice was in 1962
So it’s not unprecedented. 1962 was a time of cooling in the earth. The earth is in a time of cooling now too.
Frederick Michael says:
August 6, 2010 at 1:37 pm
If this plugs the Nares strait, it’ll stay plugged for a very long time. That might matter; the ice lost through the Nares was all multi-year.
Sounds like that’s a normal occurrence, specially in times of cooling.
This “calving iceberg” is just the Polar Bear Ferry leaving its dock, right on time, as usual. I sent a txt to G.P. Bear and he mentioned that this is how they travel to the smaller islands nearby.
Cant be that serious as ClimateProgress.org has not reported it yet…
By the way every chance you get post the following link in their post comments sections as they keep removing it when I add it in :), cant think why!!
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Billy Liar says:
August 6, 2010 at 4:12 pm
EFS_Junior says:
August 6, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Did anyone else not notice that the number of melt ponds in the vicinity of and on the surface of the Petermann Glacier is considerably diminished in the August 5 2010 picture at the top of the post compared with picture taken on June 18 2003 below it?
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1) Clouds obscure a majority of the ice cap in that region for the recent August 2010 images.
2) You should not compare images of melt ponds in June with those taken in August, as many of the melt ponds will have drained by the July time frame, as they have done so far in 2010. The drained melt ponds show up like dried water spots on your monitor, much more difficult to see, if you haven’t been watching them on a daily basis, since June as I have done.
The calving iceberg has been in the ocean for quite some time displacing a lot of sea water, ergo, causing and increase in sea level. However, as the ice will melt over a span of time, sea level will drop all other things being equal, as a result of the difference in density between ice and liquid water. Try it yourself by putting ice cubes in a glass of water. Mark the level of water in the glass, and check the level after the ice has melted. You will see a drop of water level in the glass.
[REPLY- Huh?! The level remains the same. Displacement is constant, isn’t it? ~ Evan]
It’s coming right at us!
Looks like a bad week to quit amphetamines…
R. LeBel says:
August 6, 2010 at 8:05 pm
The calving iceberg has been in the ocean for quite some time displacing a lot of sea water, ergo, causing and increase in sea level. However, as the ice will melt over a span of time, sea level will drop all other things being equal, as a result of the difference in density between ice and liquid water. Try it yourself by putting ice cubes in a glass of water. Mark the level of water in the glass, and check the level after the ice has melted. You will see a drop of water level in the glass.
[REPLY- Huh?! The level remains the same. Displacement is constant, isn’t it? ~ Evan]
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AFAIK the calved section was not grounded, even if it were, most of the ice would have been very close to being neutrally buoyant, as the bathymetry and top of the ice are relatively flat based on the satellite imagery and length of the glacier near sea level.
Doesen’t matter once the ice is floating though, as it displaces it’s own weight in the fluid it occupies, just like any other floating object, see;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy
Didn’t Titanic run into a broken off piece of ice. I think they’re nothing new. The ice broke off, it didn’t melt off. So it’s not global warming.
stevengoddard says:
August 6, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Snowlover123
wcp is correct. An expanding glacier moves forward and calves. A declining glacier retreats away from the sea.
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I don’t think that glacier starts crawling back up the hill. It’s in retreat because stuff is falling off it faster than the ice mass is sliding down. Retreating is not necessarily shrinking, it’s just where the snout terminates.
Check out the Meares and Columbia glaciers in Alaska. They’re only a few miles apart, one is advancing, the other retreating.
Wouldn’t the angle of the hill the glacier sits on really determine how the glacier advances and retreats?
If the glacier sits on a hill that is say 20 degrees (just for example, I don’t know the real measure of what makes a hill steep or flat), wouldn’t it act different than a glacier sitting on a hill with a 40 degree angle just because of the rate of flow? Am I being obtuse? 😉
The Finnish news have this reported as it is still not sure how much of this event was caused by AGW The biggest paper in Finlands story (in Finnish)
(I’ve been a lurker here for some years but had put my first comment on this as the article is so stupid, its like I was sneezing this morning but it’s still undetermined how much of this was caused by AGW.)
Kenneth
A nice little piece from the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/07/biggest-ice-island-greenland
In particular this snippet:
“He said it was hard to judge whether the event occurred due to global warming because records on the sea water around the glacier have only been kept since 2003.
“Nobody can claim this was caused by global warming. On the other hand nobody can claim that it wasn’t,” Muenchow said, adding that the flow of sea water below the glaciers is one of the main causes of ice calvings off Greenland.”
An astute observation by Andreas Muenchow. Let me add this:
“Nobody can claim this was caused by global cooling. On the other hand nobody can claim that it wasn’t,” Muenchow said, adding that the flow of sea water below the glaciers is one of the main causes of ice calvings off Greenland.”
” “In the early morning hours of August 5, 2010, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan was born in northern Greenland,” said Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.”
WOW! I did not know Manhattan was so tiny. 😉 pg
if this huge chunk of ice floats into shipping lanes it could cause a disaster of titanic proportions
1962.. Did we have climate back then?? Holy Carbon Batman, we are caught in a vortex of…. climate repetitiveness. How boring. Bugger off, Gore & Strong. We have seen how Thugocrats run things.
regards.
C’mon, I asked a simple, civil question back at 12:20pm.
No-one’s answered!
Since the chunk that fell of in 1962 (a cooler period, as has been pointed out) was more than twice as big as this latest one, is it better or wuss than we thunk?
Someone has to know!
C’mon R. Gates. You’re not usually so shy! Where are you when we need you? Don’t want to nag you but surely you can tell us since you know, um, EVERYTHING about Arctic Ice?
Are you awake yet?
For Steve Goddard: Dear Steve – I earlier posted as follows:
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August 6, 2010 at 1:57 pm
So does this mean Arctic sea ice just increased? Are sea ice and glacial ice “fungible”?
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Although this quetion was asked naively, it was meant seriously, as I find your frequent posts on Arctic sea ice entertaining and informative. Is there a classification difference between Arctic sea ice and calved glacial ice in the Arctic? If not, does this mean a calving glacier inside the Arctic circle will increase the extent of Arctic sea ice “overnight”? If so, how “chunky” is this noise in the measurements?
All the best.
These satellite images are great.
DMI show 1000’s of them going back 12-18 months for all around Greenland.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/modis.uk.php
I like this series of pic from June 2009 showing a big lump of sea ice breaking off and floating away. It looks even bigger than 4 Manhattans.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/20090621AQUA.jpg
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/20090622AQUA.jpg
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/20090622AQUA.jpg
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/20090626AQUA.jpg
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/20090627AQUA.jpg
Your 2007 picture seems to show the glacier was shorter in 2007 than it was in 2010 before the latest lump fell off. There looks like there’s another crack further down waiting to break another lump off. So expect updates.
What a dynamic world we live in.
As Anthony said, ‘It’s what glaciers do’. If glaciers melt they retreat up valley. A calving glacier shows a healthy glacier being supplied from up valley with plenty of ice. Ice sheets will break up due to storm surges or wave action. Very cold ice becomes brittle and more likely to fracture under stress. It still seems to be held in the bay by sea ice so I guess that it will be there next year to frighten the media again.
On Sky news yesterday
“Greenland’s Farmers Welcome Global Warming”
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Greenland-Climate-Change-Offers-Hope-For-Farmers-Rising-Temperatures-Helps-Grow-Local-Produce/Article/201008115678015?lpos=World_News_Third_World_News_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15678015_Greenland_Climate_Change_Offers_Hope_For_Farmers%3A_Rising_Temperatures_Helps_Grow_Local_Produce
What’s that in elephants?