A CHUNK of ice twice the size of Manhattan has parted from Greenland’s Petermann glacier, a break researchers at the University of Delaware and Canadian Ice Service attributed to warmer ocean temperatures.
The separation along Greenland’s north-west coast on Monday is the second major calving for the glacier in three years. In August 2010 it lost an area of abouty 250 square kilometres, compared with the 120square kilometres that split off this week.
Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, said the glacier’s end point was now at ‘‘a location where it has not been for at least 150 years’’.
‘‘The Greenland ice sheet is changing rapidly before our eyes,’’ Professor Muenchow said.
He also said while ‘‘no individual glacier will be the canary in the coalmine’’, recent warming had transformed the overall ice sheet. ‘‘The Greenland ice sheet is being reduced not just in size, but in volume,’’ he said. ‘‘The big and broader climate change story is what’s happening all around Greenland.’’
Ted Scambos, the lead scientist for the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Colorado, said scientists would monitor whether the glacier’s flow rate would accelerate ‘‘because of its loss of this chunk’’. ‘‘It’s going to take a while to understand how significant a loss this is’’.
The Washington Post