Huge Ice Chunk Parts From Greenland Glacier. Where is Earth Heading To?

A huge chunk of iceberg twice the size of Manhattan parted from Greenland's Petermann glacier signifying another dramatic change in the environment due to global warming or climate change and rise in ocean temperatures.

According to researchers at the University of Delaware and the Canadian Ice Service, it was on Monday that a huge chunk of ice got separated from Greenland's northwest coast.  Prior to this it was in the year 2010 that Peterman glacier lost an area of roughly 97 square miles compared with the Monday's split that measured 46 square miles.

While the size is not as spectacular as it was in 2010, the fact that it follows so closely to the 2010 event brings the glacier's terminus to a location where it has not been for at least 150 years," said Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware. "That means the front end of the glacier is farther inland than has been in a half-century. The Greenland ice sheet as a whole is shrinking, melting and reducing in size as the result of globally changing air and ocean temperatures and associated changes in circulation patterns in both the ocean and atmosphere," Muenchow said.

This discovery was made based on the data collected by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroadiometer aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.

Muenchow notes that ever since 1987, the air around northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island has warmed by about 0.11 +/- 0.025 degrees Celsius per year.
The researchers say that the air temperature has a very little effect on the glacier. What affect the glacier is the glacier is the ocean temperature. And the researchers have ocean time series of five to eight years long. With this limited information it is difficult to notice a warming signal.

This continued splitting of icebergs could be the foretelling of something far more unfortunate.

"This is not part of natural variations anymore," said NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot, who camped on Petermann 10 years ago.

According to the researchers, "The Greenland ice sheet as a whole is shrinking, melting and reducing in size as the result of globally changing air and ocean temperatures and associated changes in circulation patterns in both the ocean and atmosphere."

Such melting of the ice causes a rise in the sea levels especially along the East Coast. This in turn multiplies the chances of floods in the most densely populated coastal areas of the world causing a threat to the wetland habitats.

The temperatures are predicted to shoot high causing the polar ice to melt which in turn results the oceans to swell in the coming decade.

Ohio State University ice scientist Ian Howat said, "There is still a chance it could be normal calving, like losing a fingernail that has grown too long, but any further loss would show it's not natural. We're still in the phase of scratching our heads and figuring out how big a deal this really is."

"Many of Greenland's southern glaciers have been melting at an unusually rapid pace. The Petermann break brings large ice loss much farther north than in the past." said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "If it continues, and more of the Petermann is lost, the melting would push up sea levels. The ice lost so far was already floating, so the breaks don't add to global sea levels."