Greenland's new ice island slides toward the sea - Capital Weather Gang
Although Greenland's glaciers calve sizable icebergs each year, the chunk of ice that broke off the Petermann was unusually large. As CWG's Brian Jackson explained, the iceberg is more typical of the massive icebergs that calve off of Antarctic glaciers than glaciers in the Arctic.
It is unclear what role (if any) climate change may have played in this, as well as with the Jakobshavn event earlier this summer. In general, scientists have observed increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet in recent years through a variety of mechanisms, including warming ocean temperatures that can melt glaciers' floating ice shelves and speed up the transport of ice from land to sea.
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