Rapid melt of Greenland's largest ice shelf

From Bloomberg Green:

As the summer melt season reaches its peak, the largest Arctic ice shelf has jettisoned a piece of ice twice the size of Manhattan.

The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland reported on Monday that the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream has lost more than 19 square miles (50 square kilometers) for the second year in a row. The giant glacier has now been reduced by 60 square miles in the past two decades. 

Ice shelves are a barrier that prevent land-based glaciers from sliding into the ocean, where they go on to melt and contributed to rising sea levels. When those structures weaken and disintegrate, as the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream has now done, glacier movement picks up.

“Using almost 30 years of satellite data, we see speed up in the glacier flow over the past decade,” said Anne Solgaard, a research scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in a statement. The current disintegration is only part of the problem, she noted, with acceleration measured upstream also “indicating a large-scale change to this huge glacier.”

Northeastern Greenland has warmed by about 3°C since 1980, and both this year and last have brought record-breaking heat. The Arctic has long faced the onslaught of rising temperatures, and the effects are only intensifying. As nations court new shipping and fossil-fuel exploration opportunities, scientists warn that summertime Arctic sea ice may only have years left. 

A glacier section broke off Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, according to report from the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.  Source: European Space Agency via AP Photo