Daily US Times: A big piece of ice has just broken away from the Arctic’s largest remaining ice shelf – 79N, or Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden – in north-east Greenland. Satellite imagery shows it to have shattered into many small pieces.
The ejected section covers about 110 square kilometers.
This is further evidence say scientists of the rapid climate changes taking place in Greenland.
“The atmosphere in this region has warmed by about 3C since 1980,” said Dr Jenny Turton, the polar researcher at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany.
“And in 2019 and 2020, it saw record summer temperatures,” he told BBC News.
Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden is roughly 80km long by 20km wide and it is the floating front end of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream – where it flows off the land into the ocean to become buoyant.
The 79N glacier splits in two at its leading edge, and a minor offshoot turning directly north. It’s this offshoot, or tributary, called Spalte Glacier, that has now disintegrated.
Already in 2019, the ice feature was already heavily fractured while this summer’s warmth has been its final undoing. Spalte Glacier has become a flotilla of icebergs.
If you look closely at the satellite pictures and the higher air temperatures recorded in the region are obvious from the large number of melt ponds that sit on top of the shelf ice.
The presence of such liquid water is often problematic for iceberg. If the water fills crevasses, it can help to open them up. The water will push down on the fissures, driving them through to the base of the shelf in a process known as hydrofracturing, which will weaken an ice shelf.
Oceanographers have also observed warmer temperatures at sea which mean the shelf ice is almost certainly being melted from beneath as well.
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