Tag Archives: glaciers

NASA's just released some pretty dramatic satellite photos of the north branch of Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier from July 6 and 7–when an area of ice 2.7 square miles in size ( more than twice the size of New York City's Central Park), where the glacier meets the ocean, broke up overnight and the glacier retreated one mile inland. That's as much retreat in one night as the average for nearly two years. Thomas Wagner, cryospheric program scientist at NASA, commented: While there have been ice breakouts of this magnitude from Jakobshavn and other glaciers in the past, this event is unusual because it occurs on the heels of a warm winter that saw no sea ice in the surrounding bay. While this exact relationship between these events is being determined, it lends credence to the theory that warming of the oceans is responsible for the ice loss observed throughout Greenland and Antarctica…. http://bit.ly/b1jf2R added by: ras_menelik