Far North Greenland Glacier Cracking Up

(AP)  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 Ohio State 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 southern 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.

"The pictures speak for themselves," said Jason Box, a glacier expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University who spotted the changes while studying new satellite images. "This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It's just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off.... It is imminent."

The chunk that came off the glacier between July 10 and July 24 is about half the size of Manhattan and doesn't worry Box as much as the cracks. The Petermann glacier had a larger breakaway ice chunk in 2000. But the overall picture worries some scientists.

"As we see this phenomenon occurring further and further north - and Petermann is as far north as you can get - it certainly adds to the concern," said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado.

The question that now faces scientists is: Are the fractures part of normal glacier stress or are they the beginning of the effects of global warming?

"It certainly is a major event," said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally in a telephone interview from a conference on glaciers in Ireland. "It's a signal but we don't know what it means."

It is too early to say it is clearly global warming, Zwally said. Scientists don't like to attribute single events to global warming, but often say such events fit a pattern.

University of Colorado professor Konrad Steffen, who returned from Greenland Wednesday and has studied the Petermann glacier in the past, said that what Box saw is not too different from what he saw in the 1990s: "The crack is not alarming... I would say it is normal."

However, scientists note that it fits with the trend of melting glacial ice they first saw in the southern part of the massive island and seems to be marching north with time. Big cracks and breakaway pieces are foreboding signs of what's ahead.

Further south in Greenland, Box's satellite images show that the Jakobshavn glacier, the fastest retreating glacier in the world, set new records for how far it has moved inland.

That concerns Colorado's Abdalati: "It could go back for miles and miles and there's no real mechanism to stop it."

[jimfinster]

hawkSprings & louiville2:


You warming deniers are a funny bunch. Please keep on posting, as your scientific analyses are always good for a laugh !

[jimfinster]

hawkSprings & louiville2:


You warming deniers are a funny bunch. Please keep on posting, as your scientific analyses are always good for a laugh !

[hawksprings]

Meanwhile, on August 24th in Minnesota and Wisconsin, they are going to get frost tonight.
Maybe the glacier is so cold it is cracking.

[louiville2]

ubrew12- Polar bears are not on the endangered list it''s the threatened list and Canada wants it''s removal, seems they have too many. Current debate is in taking them off the list entirely since populations have increased steadily since the 1950''s. "As I%u2019ve tried to indicate, its not just computer models that think AGW is real. CO2 is a major factor in Earths greenhouse effect (agreed since 1890). CO2 concentrations have gone up 50% in the last century (agreed since 1960). What does the computer in your brain calculate the likely effect of that would be?? Nothing??" What''s your source (%u201Cits not just computer models that think AGW is real%u201D) nitwit? Because I have read the IPCC report and it doesn%u2019t say that, your just another empty shell regurgitating alarmist propaganda. When push them your hands just fall through the fake ******.

[ubrew12]

Honestly, man.
At this point, WHAT THE FVCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU???

[ubrew12]

louiville2 said: "you don''t have anything concrete to back up your bravado. LOL AGW ONLY exists in computer models, models that ALL said warming would continue after 1998, which it didn''t."

As I''ve tried to indicate, its not just computer models that think AGW is real. CO2 is a major factor in Earths greenhouse effect (agreed since 1890). CO2 concentrations have gone up 50% in the last century (agreed since 1960). What does the computer in your brain calculate the likely effect of that would be?? Nothing??

The polar bear is now classified, by BUSH''s EPA, as endangered of extinction. How long does it take to EVOLVE a polar bear anyway??? THATS how long its been since the north polar ice cap was THIS scr*wed up.

What happens to the polar bear could happen to your children. Given the many alternatives to that fate, why take the risk?

[louiville2]

ubrew12- in other words you don''t have anything concrete to back up your bravado. LOL AGW ONLY exists in computer models, models that ALL said warming would continue after 1998, which it didn''t. Computer models that CANNOT predict PAST known weather. Go ahaead and cling to your VODOO scienctist who won''t even debate the science (Cowards).

[ubrew12]

osidepops1 said: "get ready for EXTREEME weather in our and our childrens future."

What children?

What you''ve commented on is what they know about. Its what they DON''T know about that scares me. Like, what happens to the millions of tons of methane gas trapped in the Arctic permafrost, when that permafrost melts? There''s enough methane trapped there to increase global temperatures by 10 times the amount projected by man-made CO2 increases. Not all of the feedbacks identified due to global warming are ''negative'', you know. And there''s no particular reason they should be.

People who deny global warming are, at this point, playing Russian Roulette with our children. That is NOT funny. Eventually, names will be taken, and lists will be made. If things turn out for the worst, and our children DON''T have a future, those lists are going to be very popular... indeed.

[ubrew12]

louiville2, Global dimming is a proven man-made effect in which aerosol pollutants dim the earth by intercepting solar radiation. The Clear Air act reduced this threat by controlling the aerosol pollution created by cars, power plants, and jets. But, you could increase it if you want and deal with the thousands of people with emphysema and other lung diseases who would die as a result, as well as massive reductions in crop yields (and attendant deaths by starvation) that would also occur. Dimming the earth DOES cool it, but only a committed neocon would consider it as a solution to Global Warming: hey, that makes it your solution of choice!!!

louiville2 said: "What [climatological] science [of the present day] is that?" Gee, I guess there IS no science of the present day to match what you''ve swallowed whole-hog from your neocon websites about events a million years ago. Hey, are you sure the earth existed a million years ago [according to those same websites]? You know, the earth was created in seven days about 7000 years ago, and all that...

[louiville2]

"There are ominous signs that the earth''s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976 If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)" joeamerican3 what can I say it must be your first Man Kind Will ____ if we don''t act now" scam (idiot).