Giant ice 'island' breaks off Greenland glacier

[The Straight Story]

Giant ice 'island' breaks off Greenland glacier

An ice "island" four times larger than Manhattan and up to 600 feet tall has broken off the world's northernmost glacier, a University of Delaware researcher reports. The chunk of Arctic ice that calved off Greenland's Petermann Glacier is the biggest in almost 50 years.

The icy isle, which broke off early yesterday, is at least 100 square miles and as a thick as "up to half the height of the Empire State Building," according to a university news release.

In mid-July, other scientists on a Greenpeace ship predicted the calving, the Sydney Morning Herald reported last month. They said that, altogether, 1.1 trillion tons of ice was set to crumble from the glacier.

"Ocean warming currents are circulating around the fjord here and eroding the underbelly of Petermann glacier at an incredible rate, which is 25 times that of the surface melt," said Alun Hubbard, a glaciologist at the University of Wales. There's been a revelation in the last couple of years in the role that warming oceans play in triggering the enhanced acceleration, breakup and thinning of these outlet glaciers."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/08/giant-ice-island-breaks-off-greenland-glacier/1

[SharonAnn]

1. More of that darned "liberal" press as work, publishing something like this.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. The comments are really something to behold there.

The McPaper consumers are out in force.