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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Dear Smokey,
I’m not quite Al Gore
Please note that Andy Revkin claims, within 3 minutes both that melting Greenland ice could cause cooling in the Atlantic AND that melting of the ice sheets will cause sea levels to rise by seven metres. A sign of a die-hard alarmist is to go for the contradictory extremes – and not notice the problem.
Anyway, please take a look at the video to see for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbMkurETxjU
http://manicbeancounter.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/andy-revkin-doesn%e2%80%99t-know-which-way-to-panic/
manicbeancounter,
I was kidding about Al Gore. Sorry if I botched the message. I agree with you.
A lot of funny remarks and it is true that normal, non-melting glaciers to calve, sometimes spectacularly. But it take a particularly out-of-touch or unobservant one (in some cases intentionally unobservant) to not know that worldwide glaciers have been retreating at a record rate, some disappearing entirely. Setting the polar ice cap aside, put “retreating glaciers” into your Google search term and you will find plenty of photographic evidence that _most_ glaciers are retreating (means “melting”) at an alarming rate.
There will be years of record cold along with record heat, that’s how it works, and some may even grow over a short period, but the trend is downward precipitously, especially in the last 30 years. Is it natural or is it the result of man’s activities? I don’t know but 98% of the world’s scientist do actually believe in global warming and that it is caused by man. Those that don’t get a big stage supplied by companies and political parties with an interest in playing down the obvious.
If 98% of your doctors tell you that you have a cancerous wart on your butt do you ignore them because you fear medical procedures or the cost thereof?
The potential consequences to where we live of not listening to the people who are trained in these sciences and taking steps are far worse and more permanent than the consequences of doing something and there being no such problem.
Set politics aside.
Joel
Atlanta
Joeldm
Kidding, right? In the off chance that you aren’t, care to support your claims with peer-reviewed materials–and nothing from the WWF, Greenpeace, the Blowington Post, the IPCC, or any other discredited source.
joeldm says:
August 8, 2010 at 3:28 pm
“A lot of funny remarks and it is true that normal, non-melting glaciers to calve, sometimes spectacularly. But it take a particularly out-of-touch or unobservant one (in some cases intentionally unobservant) to not know that worldwide glaciers have been retreating at a record rate, some disappearing entirely. Setting the polar ice cap aside, put “retreating glaciers” into your Google search term and you will find plenty of photographic evidence that _most_ glaciers are retreating (means “melting”) at an alarming rate.”
Well, I’d consider you observant. The last 12,000ish years have been tough on glaciers. In the U.S., they’ve retreated all the way back from the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Those &%#! paleos and their carbon-based fuels along with (phwewee!) those %#@ur momisugly! gassy mastodons. It was just more methane and CO2 than those glaciers could stand. BTW, what is the “normal” rate for glacier retreat (cite, please)?
“There will be years of record cold along with record heat, that’s how it works, and some may even grow over a short period, but the trend is downward precipitously, especially in the last 30 years. Is it natural or is it the result of man’s activities? I don’t know but 98% of the world’s scientist do actually believe in global warming and that it is caused by man. Those that don’t get a big stage supplied by companies and political parties with an interest in playing down the obvious.”
Only 98%? I should think it would be 100% that believe in global warming. After all, we have been warming up in fits and starts – but steadily – since heading out of the Little Ice Age. I guess 2% of them haven’t been paying much attention, eh?
“If 98% of your doctors tell you that you have a cancerous wart on your butt do you ignore them because you fear medical procedures or the cost thereof?”
Sorry, joeldm . You lost me there with that non sequitur hypothetical. Put me in the slow learners class, will ya’? I can’t make heads nor tails of what you’re getting at.
“The potential consequences to where we live of not listening to the people who are trained in these sciences and taking steps are far worse and more permanent than the consequences of doing something and there being no such problem.”
Whoa up there, cowboy! I have no clue as to what you just said. Where would I live and what consequences would I avoid if I listened to scientists? Which scientists? Are we back on the wart-on-the-butt thing again? Are you invoking the Precautionary Principle? Do I saw off my leg to make sure that ugly wart doesn’t spread to my big toe? Then, because the scientists said so, I move to Saudi Arabia because it’s already hotter’n blue blazes there and I won’t notice a few degrees of extra warmth there? Help me out, here.
“Set politics aside.”
Never! I make it a point to vote early and vote often. Me’n my dad and mum (rest their souls) never miss an opportunity to vote.
joeldm: August 8, 2010 at 3:28 pm
If 98% of your doctors tell you that you have a cancerous wart on your butt do you ignore them because you fear medical procedures or the cost thereof?
Yes, if they’re orthopedic surgeons and not dermatologists or oncologists.
And even then, they’ll insist on a biopsy to confirm their diagnosis.
“You are a No-Go- at the Socratic Method Station.”
Bill Tuttle says:
August 9, 2010 at 1:40 am
joeldm: August 8, 2010 at 3:28 pm
If 98% of your doctors tell you that you have a cancerous wart on your butt do you ignore them because you fear medical procedures or the cost thereof?
Yes, if they’re orthopedic surgeons and not dermatologists or oncologists.
And even then, they’ll insist on a biopsy to confirm their diagnosis.
“You are a No-Go- at the Socratic Method Station.”
———————————————–
You mean to tell me you understood joeldm’s point (if any)? You’re a better man than I am, sir!
H.R. : August 9, 2010 at 8:55 am
You man to tell me you understood joeldm’s point (if any)? You’re a better man than I am, sir!
Not at all, sir, just a bit more experienced at understanding arcane trains of thought — I work with Iraqi pilots…
According to an AP Story by Charles L Hanley in 8/13 Columbus OH Dispatch, “Climate Predictions Ringing True”, http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/stories/2010/08/13/climate-predictions-ringing-true.html?sid=101 :
“Researchers last week spotted that a 100-square-mile chunk of ice had calved off from the great Petermann Glacier in Greenland’s far northwest. It was the largest ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half-century of observation.”
Yet according to the 8/6 UDel press release quoted above, the nearby Ward Hunt Ice Shelf calved off a 230 square mile berg in 1962.
AP should hire a fact checker!
TomRude says:
Bet the Globe and Mail will jump on this one….
Bingo! The Globe was slow, but made up for that with stories on both Aug 12 and 13. In neither case did the story explicitly attribute the event to AGW, but when read in context, the message was clear.
The first story, after summarizing Muenchow’s account, noted, under the sub-heading ‘THE WEATHER EFFECT’ that the event “follows the six warmest months on record ” and went on to note the melting of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica “faster than predicted” and to quote Representative Markey’s wisdom. The story concluded with info on Russia’s heat wave. The reader’s attention was directed to the article by the headline on the front of the business section “Watching ice melt”.
Today’s story was an AP item headed “Climate scientists forecast more heat, fires and floods” and after various references to AGW sources, summarized several catastrophes (including heat in Russia) by calling them “key cases [of a] perfect fit” with more extreme weather events due to global warming. Case no. 4 was the calving of the Petermann Glacier, occurring “five months after an international scientific team” reported that “ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet is expanding from the south”.
“Must have been climate change back then too. ” Watts
Your spin vs. science. And you voted for Bush? And you hate Obama? Maybe you and Sarah and Carl and Dick can protect us from the vast left wing conspiring scientists. Of the whole wide world!
It started with a hacking November 17, 2009. According to wikipedia, “The climate-sceptic blog Watts Up With That, which had obtained a copy of the files, also received a posting from the hacker complaining that nothing was happening.”
Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center, said that sceptics were “taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious”,[16] and called the entire incident a careful, “high-level, orchestrated smear campaign to distract the public about the nature of the climate change problem.”[55]
The Investigatory Committee finally reported on June 4, 2010 “…there is no substance to the allegations against Mann.[15]” The Christian Science Monitor observed: “Climate scientists exonerated in ‘climategate’ but public trust damaged”.
“Columnists who gave greatest vent to their indignation have not made any revisions or corrections, let alone apologised to the scientists whose integrity they so sweepingly impugned.” Tiffen, University of Sydney
Thank you for the opportunity to respond directly to your continuing spin.
Look guys,
The one in 1962, well, it was..
Well it was just my mum I’m afraid. There were no epidurals back then and I was a 10lb baby and..
How could we have known that her screams could have broken the arctic glaciers. How could we have known that her single act of selfishness back in 1961 could have changed the world forever.
p.s.
Love you mum.
GISS. If you want to include my mums data record into your own graphs then just let me know how much funding I can get as I may have a better offer from the Romani’s.
Now this has got to be pure coincidence surely or do you think that perhaps the move company The Aslyum have paid some marketing company to promote Assoc. Prof. Andrew Muenchow recent work?
I’ve just been watching cable TV and was a bit gobsmacked to find this move being shown on the the SyFy channel this morning.
http://www.cinematical.com/2010/07/28/titanic-ii-trailer-hits-threatens-to-sink-a-ship-and-hearts/
Yes, Titanic II is a disaster movie (du eto be released in the US next week) which takes place in April 2012, 100 years afer the sinking of the RMS Titanic. A new luxury cruise liner, the Titanic II, has been christened, and is soon to embark on her maiden voyage, on the same route the Titanic took 100 years before.
During the voyage, the effects of global warming cause a section (teh size of Rhode Island) of a carving glacier in Greenland to break off and to produce an enormous tsunami that sends an iceberg crashing into the Titanic II, leaving it to the same fate of her predecessor.
Here is the official trailer (Quicktime required) and photos from the film on the ‘The Asylum’ web site
http://www.theasylum.cc/product.php?id=174
and here it is also on YouTube
KevinUK – the tragedy of the original Titanic was in the lack of life boats to save everyone. I doubt they would let a ship sail today with that shortcoming. However, for a disaster movie, anything is possible and I guess they had to make this one just “because”.
Thanks for the warning. I will avoid both sailing on that day and the Syfy channel! 😉