Manhattan-Size Iceberg Breaks Away: Sign of Global Warming?
Those who weren't sure about global warming may want to reference the Manhattan-sized iceberg that just split off the end of Greenland.
The Petermann Glacier is one of Greenland's largest. This week it gave birth to an iceberg that was 46 square miles, which is even larger than Manhattan. Jason Box, an event scientist with Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center, predicted the break some time last year. He cautioned that the growing crack would likely cause the iceberg to sever once warm weather approached.
"We can see the crack widening in the past year through satellite pictures, so it seems imminent," Box told OurAmazingPlanet in September of last year.
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While the iceberg is not the biggest to have broken off of a Greenland iceberg, its is still of reasonable size and stands out for it's own unique reason.
According to LiveScience, "its birth has moved the front end of the massive glacier farther inland than it has been in 150 years, Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, said in a statement."
One of the most massive icebergs birthed by the Petermann Glacier was in August of 2010, when an iceberg nearly four times the size of Manhattan was severed.
Despite the fascination, however, the continued splitting of icebergs could be the foretelling of something far more unfortunate.
"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.
Many of the environmentally conscious argue that the splitting icebergs are a sign of global warming, although others insist that it is a mere matter of chance when the ice decides to split.
