Four Mile Wide Iceberg Breaks Off Glacier in Greenland

It’s four miles (six kilometers) wide and the largest ever seen in over a decade in Greenland. An iceberg that size has recently broken off from a glacier in eastern Greenland and the dramatic even was captured on video.

New York University professor David Holland is an expert in atmospheric and ocean science. He told The Associated Press that “this is the largest event we’ve seen in over a decade in Greenland.”

The video of the amazing phenomenon was taken on June 22 by David Holland’s wife, Denise Holland. She is of New York University’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The Hollands had camped by the Helheim Glacier for weeks to collect data. They wanted to better project sea level changes due to global warming.

Holland said Wednesday that the time-lapse video, which is speeded up 20 times, shows “3 percent of the annual ice loss of Greenland occur in 30 minutes.”

“It sounded like rockets going off,” he said, describing it as “a very complex, chaotic, noisy event.”

The couple is studying in Greenland, but they said that “the real concern is in Antarctica. Everything there is so huge that the stakes are much higher.

This was not the only cataclysmic event in Greenland recently. In northwestern Greenland, another large iceberg has apparently grounded on the sea floor near the village of Innarsuit. Residents with houses near the shore were prepared to evacuate if necessary.

At least one person thought the whole thing was a hoax:

It’s a hoax!! That is a Hollywood made video, scientist are lying!! That will probably be GOP & EPA Statement. Incredible how much ONE country can effect the worlds well been…

— Alvaro Soto (@AlvaroSoto13) July 11, 2018