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Largest Arctic Iceberg Spotted
last update: Jul 12, 2011 08:31 PM
From an "Our Amazing Planet" article: It is the largest Arctic Iceberg formed in 50 years ! The massive ice island that broke off a glacier in Greenland 11 months ago has been winding its way through Arctic waters ever since.
It has now been spotted by NASA's Aqua satellites near the coast of Labrador, Canada. The ice island was formed when a 97-square-mile (251-square-kilometer) chunk of ice broke off Greenland's Petermann Glacier on 5th August, 2010. On Sept., 17, 2010, Environment Canada dropped a beacon on PII-A, to help track the island.
Petermann Glacier is one of the two largest remaining glaciers in Greenland that terminate in floating shelves. According to researchers at the University of Delaware; when the chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan broke off, the Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 43-mile- (70-kilometer-) long floating ice shelf.
The Canadian Ice Service has since been tracking the ice island, dubbed PII-A, via satellite and radio beacon.
The island has been slowly breaking up and melting on its more than 1,800-mile (3,000-km) journey so far. But even with its diminishing size, the island could pose a hazard to offshore oil platforms and shipping lanes off Newfoundland.
Read:
Our Amazing Planet, 5th July 2011
