Ecocentric

VIDEO: Giant Iceberg Breaks Off Greenland Glacier

An enormous iceberg tore away from Greenland glacier on Monday. This incredible video shows how much the glacier has lost over the past few years

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NASA / Associated Press

This Monday, July 16, 2012 satellite image provided by NASA shows calving, crescent-shaped crack at center, on the Petermann Glacier in northwestern Greenland. An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan tore off one of Greenland's largest glaciers. Scientists had been watching the 15-mile long crack in the floating ice shelf of the northerly Petermann Glacier for several years. On Monday NASA satellites showed it had broken completely, forming a 46 square mile iceberg. Petermann spawned an iceberg twice that size in 2010.

An ice chunk twice the size of Manhattan broke off of Greenland last week, in another sign of Arctic warming.

The 46-square-mile piece of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland “calved” away from the mainland on Monday. It tore along a crack in the glacier that researchers have been watching for years.

Another iceberg twice its size (i.e., four times the size of Manhattan) broke off the same glacier in 2010.

This striking video by New Scientist shows the damage Petermann has sustained over the past few years. A time-lapse gives a dramatic display of the earliest loss from the glacier (beginning in 2009).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeYHzu_bW6M&feature=player_embedded]

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