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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Rexk. The Independent has the same quote: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/huge-ice-island-calves-off-greenland-glacier-2046207.html The alarmists are certainly hedging their bets on this one.
A lesson learnt: don’t order your ice-cream with extra ice – it was not meant to be that way and the extra ice will migrate.
Enneagram says:
August 6, 2010 at 12:44 pm
“A glacier turned into a iceberg and now looking for a vessel…”
Alarm! Alarm!
Thanks for the heads-up. I will be keeping my 18.5′ open bow fiberglass fishing boat at its dock on a Mid-western U.S. reservoir and cancelling my plans for a North Atlantic cruise (though I should be able to breeze through the Northwest Passage, right?).
Precautionary Principle and all that, ya’ know… ;o)
This seems to be an appropriate place to bring up the subject of “FOG” (please allow me to ask a “Weather Question” I haven’t seen addressed lately), London Fog (the real thing NOT the raincoats) was noted for many years as Ice in the North Atlantic region melted after the LIA and things began to warm up, but – here’s the kicker –
wouldn’t the reverse also be true: during ocean cooling, glaciers growing and calving, sea water freezing and creating ice, wouldn’t the cooling also create some pretty foggy weather for the Brits, etc.?
If someone has a thing for sea fog, I sure would like to hear more on the subject sometime, especially the part about sea ice formation and the foggy effect on the N.Atlantic region during cooling phases (aka Climate Changes).
Enneagram says:
August 6, 2010 at 12:44 pm
A glacier turned into a iceberg and now looking for a vessel…
Cue “Jaws” music
From CNN’s take on this:
The ice island, which is about half the height of the Empire State Building, is the biggest piece of ice to break away from the Arctic icecap since 1962
And then a few paragraphs later:
Environmentalists say ice melt is being caused by global warming with Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reaching their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years
REPLY: Told ya so, even though there’s no mention of this in the original press release. – Anthony
What they forgot to mension:
Noordpoolijs smelt snel deze zomer
Zeeijs Zuidpool groeit tot grootste oppervlakte ooit gemeten in juli
( North pole ice melts fast this summer
Southpole sea ice grows to biggest surface ever measured in July
Dutch Source : http://www.knmi.nl/cms/nieuws/nieuwsbericht/_rp_column1-1_elementId/1_82373
It is now covered in swedish media.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article7584147.ab
They say that no one can tell it is caused by AGW, but on the other hand no one can say it isn’t.
I guess they had to add that last line just to make people think that it is caused by AGW. After all Sweden has one of the worlds most AGW believing media and politicians. The article also tells the glacier has grown alot in recent years so it is expected to calve alot.
It is also covered by Swedens Al Gore, a former meteorologist, Pär Holmgren, but for once he do not blame AGW directly.
http://blogg.aftonbladet.se/vaderbloggen
He did blame the growth of Antarcitc sea ice this winter on increased calving of ice at Antarctica during the winter this year though and the calving was caused by AGW.
12:20pm. 12:02am
There’s a danger of sounding like her indoors (in a bad mood.)
But we still haven’t been told if this is good news (half the size of 1962) or bad (bigger than everything since.)
R. Gates obviously considers my impertinent Lèse Majesté to be beneath his notice – or perhaps he was out celebrating the new warmista icon (Moscow Burning) and has a sore head.
But we all know that the old standby (the 2003 French Heatwave that killed at least a Trillion French people and PROVED we have to shut down fossil fuel power stations and build more windmills NOW) is looking a bit tired and passé now.
They were really hoping (none more than R. Gates) that the only white thing in the Arctic by now would be drowned polar bears floating about. That ain’t going to happen until next year at the very earliest.
All the other breastbeating and shroudwaving ideas have gone pretty bad. They even had to get in the “2010: Warmest Year Since The Big Bang” play in 5 months early
whilst there was still some chance that they’d get some poor old greenie hack to run with the story.
So the “heatwave in Moscow” is helpful and will be trotted out ad nauseam. (Peru? Argentina? Khazakhstan? Whose heard of them? – Certainly not from the BBC!) And I guess we’ll also have this overgrown ice cube thrown at us. And probably the flooding in Pakistan. Worst for a Century!
After all we need more windmills and solar panels before the whole thing goes belly up.
No, not Gaia or The Planet or Our Grandchildren’s Future.
Just the cAGW scam.
HR, those DMI images are showing sea ice breaking off. Calving glacier ice is many, many meters thicker. Think volume.
Where do I send my donation for the rescue fund for the marooned polar bears?
That ice island ain’t going nowhere. Unless the sea ice in Nares Strait melts in the next ten days that ice island will become part of the Arctic Ice Extent.
EFS_Junior says:
August 6, 2010 at 6:55 pm
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.
That’s funny, there seem to be quite a lot of them in this picture taken in August one year ago today:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009189/crefl1_143.A2009189000000-2009189000500.250m.jpg
Not many ponds around on 16 June of this year either:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010167/crefl2_143.A2010167152500-2010167153000.250m.jpg
Climate change was blamed for the ‘calving’ ice island on the 6pm BBC news on Radio 4 today.
I always love the slashdot A.C. posts. For this story:
Folks, we’ve got a BIG Petermann floater..
Billy Liar says:
August 7, 2010 at 12:30 pm
EFS_Junior says:
August 6, 2010 at 6:55 pm
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.
That’s funny, there seem to be quite a lot of them in this picture taken in August one year ago today:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009189/crefl1_143.A2009189000000-2009189000500.250m.jpg
Not many ponds around on 16 June of this year either:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010167/crefl2_143.A2010167152500-2010167153000.250m.jpg
____________________________________________________________
Clouds clearly obscure your June image, while I can count the melt ponds on one hand from your August image.
You need to compare June with another June. July with another July, and August with another August, all being from the same two years.
Otherwise, it’s apples and oranges.
Per your original comment, what does August 5 2010 have to do with June 18 2003 anyway?
Is there some relationship between visable melt ponds at different times of year and different years with calving glaciers?
Scott Ramsdell says:
August 7, 2010 at 8:21 am
From CNN’s take on this:
….Environmentalists say ice melt is being caused by global warming with Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reaching their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years
Well, it’s good that they went to environmentalists for some information on scientific data.
This article does not take the problem seriously enough.
Andy Revkin, a real expert on the climate change issue, puts this new ice island into its proper context. It is part of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. If this all melts then Florida will be submerged under 20 feet of water. All the cool water flowing into the Atlantic will cool temperatures, maybe causing another ice age.
see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbMkurETxjU
and http://manicbeancounter.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/andy-revkin-doesn%e2%80%99t-know-which-way-to-panic/
Yup. Democrats/AGW moonbats have gone apetihs.
…-
“Markey: Deniers of global warming should ‘start their own country’
By Shane D’Aprile – 08/07/10 04:04 PM ET
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) suggested a novel use Saturday for a 100-square-mile ice sheet that has broken off Greenland.
“An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country,” Markey said in a statement. “So far, 2010 has been the hottest year on record, and scientists agree arctic ice is a canary in a coal mine that provides clear warnings on climate.”
Some scientists have attributed the breaking off of the ice sheet to abnormally warm temperatures this year.
Markey, who chairs the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, co-authored the House version of the climate change bill that’s currently stalled in the Senate.
He said it was “unclear how many giant blocks of ice it will take to break the block of Republican climate deniers in the US Senate who continue hold this critical clean energy and climate legislation hostage.””
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/113171-markey-global-warming-deniers-should-start-their-own-country-on-giant-ice-island-
manicbeancounter,
C’mon, admit it. You’re really Al Gore, lurking.☺
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=da&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dmi.dk%2Fdmi%2Fgroenlandsk_gletsjer_knaekker_-_se_billederne&sl=da&tl=en
>> From 2002 until 2009, satellite images showed that glacier front has moved farther and farther out to sea and it was expected that the tip eventually would snap off.<<
See the waves in front of the 'island', probably a kind of mini-tsumani 15-25 meters high…
I thought ice volume was the new crucial parameter, not ice area. If the claims “at least 100 square miles” and “thickness up to half the height of the empire state building’ (1250 feet = 0.38 km) are to be believed, then it is less than (0.19 km x 259 km^2) = 49 km^3. The Greenland ice sheet is somewhere around 2.5 – 5 million km^3. This represents 10-20 ppm (parts per million) of Greenland’s ice sheet, but as others have said, it isn’t going anywhere.
>> From 2002 until 2009, satellite images showed that glacier front has moved farther and farther out to sea and it was expected that the tip eventually would snap off.<<
I'm reckoning the distance moved over the 3 years, from August 2007 to August 2010, to be 15-20 km.
I used the scale on the 2nd map.
5-7 km/year.
How can a glacial tongue move 5-7 km/year?
The run out for that tongue ends at the Nares Strait which can be a busy place. I presume the snout can never advance out into the strait save for that being frozen fast. So what is the historical range of the snout of the Petermann glacier, and is this just a matter of natural aging for this area? What is the normal advance rate? Where was the snout in 1962 prior to that calving event? What, in other words, is unusual about this? I’m asking rhetorically, so don’t anyone tell me to do my own homework 🙂
That separation line can be seen in photos dating back several years – it should hardly be a surprise it was going to break at that point – there were also other cracks where it can have broken away. Only one can be the weakest link, and I’d bet the feeder glaciers on the right side of that tongue (oriented per the photo) are part of the stress that creates the weak spots.
Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 7, 2010 at 9:37 am
“HR, those DMI images are showing sea ice breaking off. Calving glacier ice is many, many meters thicker. Think volume.”
Yep I was aware of that, I only put the images there out of interest. We live in priveleged times that we all can witness such events.
Here’s a news page from DMI
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/groenlandsk_gletsjer_knaekker_-_se_billederne
which google toolbars translates thus
“From 2002 until 2009 , satellite images showed that glacier front has moved farther and farther out to sea and it was expected that the tip eventually would snap off .”
If we are going to insist that the 2010 event is a sign of global warming then should we interpret the 2002 to 2009 tongue growth as a period of global cooling or should we see it all as part of the dynamism of the region. I favour the later