Greenland Glacier Spawns Ice ‘Island’

Well, this can’t be good. A gigantic ice “island” has broken off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, the largest in almost 50 years. The chunk of ice is at least 100 square miles—that’s four times the size of Manhattan—according to a University of Delaware researcher. The iceberg calving may be a result of global warming, as “there’s been a revelation in the last couple of years in the role that warming oceans play in triggering the enhanced acceleration, breakup, and thinning of these outlet glaciers,” said Alun Hubbard, a glaciologist at the University of Wales. But fear not: This ice island won’t be headed toward you anytime soon, since it will “likely follow along the coasts of Canada's Baffin Island and Labrador, to reach the Atlantic within the next two years,” according to an environmental scholar.