Thursday, August 21, 2008

Greenland melting, melting, melting

Well heck...

WASHINGTON — In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.

And that's led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere's largest floating glacier within the year.

If it does worsen and other northern Greenland glaciers melt faster, then it could speed up sea level rise, already increasing because of melt in sourthern Greenland.

The crack is 7 miles long and about half a mile wide. It is about half the width of the 500 square mile floating part of the glacier. Other smaller fractures can be seen in images of the ice tongue, a long narrow sliver of the glacier.




And here is the rest of it.

4 comments:

Diane J Standiford said...

"Pave paradise and put in a parking lot..." What we are doing to our earth brings this song to my mind. We don't know what we had till it's gone...

Phil said...

The good news is that many people now living twenty miles inland will soon be the proud owners of prime beach-front property.

brenda said...

I try to keep up informed about whats going on with global warming, and the ice in Greenland melting is the big one. I just hope the world is paying attention to this future catastrophe.

brenda said...

Let me correct my reply, I meant try to keep informed, not up informed, lol