Petermann glacier

Dramatic Pictures of Petermann Glacier Ice Loss

by Bryan Walker September 2, 2011

Jason Box has provided startling photographs which document the ice area detachment, four times the size of Manhattan Island, that occurred on 4 August, 2010 from the Petermann glacier in northwest Greenland. Photos taken in 2009 are matched with photos of the same area taken on 24 July this year.  Here’s an aerial oblique front-on [...]

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The Climate Show #17: the end of the peer show

by Gareth July 27, 2011

Nano electric cars from India, 100 year old electric vehicles, the Petermann ice island floating down towards the Atlantic, heatwaves in the USA and snow in North Canterbury, and a bit of peerless chat about a larrikin Lord on his way to New Zealand. With added vegan cheese and the BFC (big fat cat). Yes [...]

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On fire inside a snowball

by Gareth August 15, 2010

Fire: NOAA’s National Climate Data Centre has posted its report on global climate for July (press release). The combined global land and sea surface temperature of 16.5ºC was the second warmest in the NOAA record, 0.66°C above the average for the last 100 years of 15.8°C. The January to July period was the warmest in [...]

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It breaks

by Gareth August 9, 2010

The Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland has calved a massive “ice island” from its floating tongue (the largest in northern hemisphere), as the MODIS image above demonstrates. The island is approximately 260 square kilometers in area, making it equivalent to (arbitrary choice of geographical comparison appropriate to blog) eleven Rangitoto Islands (or four Manhattans, or [...]

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Don’t watch that, watch this!

by Gareth June 12, 2010

If you’ve got any interest at all in the state of the Arctic Sea Ice, resist the temptation to watch the World Cup, or the start of the All Black’s winter season, and take a look at David Barber’s talk at the International Polar Year’s Oslo Science Conference. Go to the “Web TV” page, then [...]

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It’s grim up North (but beautiful too)

by Gareth March 29, 2010

Blogs, or to spell out the contraction, web logs, were originally just that: a log of interesting things found on the internet. Yesterday was a day when I rediscovered that tradition. Prompted by a comment from glaciologist Mauri Pelto on my recent Greenland post, I started off by making a visit to NASA’s MODIS Rapid [...]

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Wouldn’t it be ice

by Gareth July 29, 2009

Pictures from my new favourite blog, Meltfactor.org, where Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Centre at Ohio State is posting from the Greenpeace expedition to the Petermann glacier in NW Greenland. The pictures are stunning (above shows fracturing on the end of the ice tongue) — and the insight to what’s going up there [...]

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On an island

by Gareth July 24, 2009

NASA’s Earth Observatory is without doubt one of my favourite web sites. As I write, the above view of sea ice off Baffin Island (or a version of it) is their Image of the Day, and aside from the obvious beauties of the swirls of melting sea ice (memorably described in a comment at RealClimate [...]

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First we lose Manhattan…

by Gareth July 16, 2009

It looks as though the Petermann Ice Tongue in northern Greenland is about to lose another major chunk of ice. This New Scientist video (accompanying text here) shows a team working on the tongue, documenting events as they happen. They expect a major break-up event within weeks: When this happens, an island of ice the [...]

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The cracks are showing

by Gareth August 21, 2008

Arctic warming is taking a toll on more than sea ice: two of Greenland’s largest glaciers have experienced significant breakups over the last month, according to researchers at Ohio State University. The Petermann glacier in the far northwest of the island has lost a 29 square kilometre chunk of its floating ice tongue, and a [...]

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