Petermann Glacier Picture: Before And After Images Show Extent Of 2010 Greenland Ice Break (PHOTOS)

When a 100 square mile chunk -- an area four times the size of Manhattan -- broke off Greenland's Petermann Glacier in the summer of 2010, scientists knew that it was a historic event. After all, it was the largest known calving in Greenland's history, and the largest to occur in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

Over the last year, scientists have only been able to view the extent of the breakup via satellite imagery. Until now.

Photographs taken in July and released on Wednesday offer a new perspective on the August 2010 break, showing before and after images of different areas of Petermann Glacier.

(PHOTOS BELOW)

"Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the breakup, which rendered me speechless," Alan Hubbard, the scientist from Aberystwyth University in Wales who took the most recent photograph, said in a statement.

And we can expect more. Hubbard told MSNBC.com that another sheet, about half the size of the 2010 chunk, is poised to break away.

Jason Box, a scientist with the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University and photographer of the 2009 image, told HuffPost that the summer of 2010 was Greenland's warmest on record, and records have been kept since 1873.

"We're bearing witness to abrupt climate change," Box told HuffPost. "This isn't of in the future. It's very much now."

To see more before and after images and to learn about the Petermann Glacier, visit the Byrd Polar Research Center. For more images of Greenland's glaciers, click here.

LOOK: Before and after images of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland. The cliff walls on the side of the glacier are three times the height of the Eiffel Tower:

Credit: Jason Box/Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University.

Credit: Alun Hubbard/Aberystwyth University, Wales.

LOOK: Satellite images of Petermann Glacier:

Comments

[Publicola]

08:43 PM on 09/07/2011

AGW "Skeptics"­: God Will Save Us From Global Warming

Prominent global warming "skeptics" including climate scientist Roy Spencer, ­purported "hockey stick" slayer Ross McKitrick, and Joseph D'Aleo (Icecap blog) preach that per Biblical prophesy God will protect us from global warming, along with other Christian fundamentalist signatorie­s of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation's "Evangelic­al Declaration on Global Warming":

http://www.cornwallalliance.org/blog/item/prominent-signers-of-an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/

Roy Spencer is moreover on the Cornwall Alliance's Board of Advisers.

http://www.cornwallalliance.org/about/board-of-advisors/

More from the Cornwall Alliance on their religious fundamentalist belief that per the Bible God will protect us from global warming:

----------­----------­---
The world is in the grip of an idea: that burning fossil fuels... is causing global warming that will be so dangerous that we must stop it by reducing our use...

We believe that idea... fails the tests of theology..­. with a worldview of the Earth and its climate system contrary to that taught in the Bible...

God’s wisdom, power, and faithfulness justify confidence that Earth’s ecosystems are robust and will, by God’s providence­, accomplish the purposes He set for them.
----------­----------­----
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/docs/a-renewed-call-to-truth-prudence-and-protection-of-the-poor.pdf

givemtheirwish: "…Rev ALGORE…"

Science denier irony is eternal.

[Exusian]

10:11 AM on 09/07/2011

The 2011 melt season has now produced a new second lowest Arctic sea ice extent:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

... a new lowest Arctic sea ice area for this date:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png

...and a new lowest Arctic sea ice volume:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_VOL_min_to_date.png

All in a year that is not in contention to produce record a record high global average temperature, and a year that started with a realtively strong La Nina and is presently in an ENSO neutral period.

[Richard2]

12:46 PM on 09/11/2011

The WUWT website has a sea ice reference page that displays sea ice extent data from 6 different credible sources. One indicates a new low extent by a marginal amount, two are on track for a tie with 2007, and three, including the one cited above, are on track to be only slightly above the 2007 minimum.

It appears the sea ice extent minimum is roughly at the same level as four years ago. Not a recovery, but also not a "death spiral."

[Publicola]

02:48 PM on 09/13/2011

Pictures Worth 1 Million Science Denier Obfuscations Dept:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_hires.png

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png?

[gallon]

10:10 PM on 09/13/2011

Looking at it from your own denier perspective, R2, the Arctic sea ice in the last few years is at a historic low.

[Exusian]

05:28 PM on 09/12/2011

On the contrary, Richard. The 2011 melt is only slightly above 2007 in extent, clearly slightly below it in area, and FAR below it in volume, all in a year *not* in contention for setting a record global average, and *not* in an ENSO El Nino phase, yet 2011 still resulted in *less* ice than 2007.

Welcome to the new 'normal', a normal that is clearly on a downward slope.

Which is exactly why many are using the phrase "death spiral."

[Richard2]

01:44 PM on 09/13/2011

Visiting the Mendenhall Glacier, the glaciers in Glacier Bay National Park, and the college glaciers in College Fjord, one can observe and accept that glaciers have sculpted the surface of the earth for many thousands of years, and that there is no consistency to the behavior of individual glaciers. Also, the "rebound" effect is still occurring from the existence of previous continent wide glaciers. All these processes occurring now were also occurring hundreds and even thousands of years ago. The physical evidence is there for anyone to observe.

As these processes started long before anyone's start date for "man-made global warming, it is illogical to jump to the conclusion that any change in glaciers must be proof of man-made global warming. The processes seen in Alaska are old, much older than the industrial revolution.

[Publicola]

02:53 PM on 09/13/2011

Richard2: "there is no consistenc­y to the behavior of individual glaciers"

Lie.

"While there are isolated cases of growing glaciers, the overwhelming trend in glaciers worldwide is retreat. In fact, the global melt rate has been accelerating since the mid-1970s."

http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing-intermediate.htm

[MNJim]

11:23 PM on 09/05/2011

Jeebus----what does one do if his country melts away?

[givemtheirwish]

09:23 PM on 09/05/2011

GLOBULL WARMING ALARMIST MELTDOWN #8790

Another interesting paper from Dr. Salby at Maquarie, Oz.
"Dr. Murry Salby, Chair of Climate Science at the respected Macquarie University in Australia, presented recently to the Sydney Institute. Professor Salby’s paper, with all the graphs, will be released in about six weeks. His book Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate will be released later this year. Don’t expect an easy read - but if his research holds up, it could well change the direction of the entire climate debate.

Salby suggests that the earth’s own warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age (1680) has produced the higher CO2 levels in our atmosphere today. Not the other way around. He notes that humans emit about 5.5 gigatons of CO2 each year, but the oceans emit about 90 gigatons, and plants about 60 gigtatons. Salby says that many scientists have assumed the net flows of carbon to and from the natural sinks cancel each other out, but there’s no reliable data to confirm this. If there’s been even a fractional change in natural emissions that would overwhelm the human emissions blamed for our warming."
READ ON http://newsbyus.com/index.php/article/3549

[palindrom]

10:09 PM on 09/05/2011

Oh, that.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/murray_salby_and_conservation.php

[gitrdone]

11:35 PM on 09/05/2011

Good link above, another bull theory by Deniers. You guys fall for anything it seems.

[givemtheirwish]

11:55 PM on 09/05/2011

Of course, of course; how was your DENIALIST (that AGW's a BUST) Kool-Aid?
Hope you quenched your thirst as the AGW MELTDOWN continues unabated.
Having said that we haven't had a Rev ALGORE or Hansen psychotic event for days now!!!!!
ROFL..............................

[Avatarius1]

06:50 PM on 09/05/2011

I thought the NOAA said we were now in a state of global cooling as of 2009? This is getting very hard to keep up with.

[lbsaltzman]

08:44 PM on 09/05/2011

I am not aware of any prediction of global cooling. Please cite a source if you want to be taken seriously.

[Avatarius1]

08:58 PM on 09/05/2011

http://butnowyouknow.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/4th-year-of-global-cooling-noaa-says/

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080313_coolest.html

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=111

[Paul Pierett]

03:32 AM on 09/06/2011

I have some work posted at Nationalforestlawblog.com, Oct. Newsletter 2009. I have another piece moving through the Library of Congress showing all the downward trends in temperatures, hurricane activity, and such. I need someone to post it on a credible blog.
We have entered a solar minimum which is one step up from a mini-ice age. Those who wish to claim we are entering an ice age, need about 10,000 more years before we slide down the 50,000 year drop to and into the next ice age. This is all based on Milankovich Cycles which have been ignored by US Universities, US Government, the U.N., Royal Society, IPCC and the Nobel Peace Price Committee to name a few.
Those who want to continue to believe in man-made global warming will continue until they find their friends or themselves in a frozen position due to a collapse of the energy grid.
What does that mean to us? Stack your wood high and long. Don't care about a carbon footprint and the rest of that propaganda. We are in for severe winters at least to 2030. Don't invest in buffet restuarants. Food will be scarce.
The thinning of the herd has begun in Russia, Texas, Colorado, South Africa, Africa and China as a whole, and so on. Just build ya some google new alerts and one will be surprized at what is happening.
Bottom line, we may not have any hurricane seasons by 2025. Paul Pierett

[chrisd3]

11:54 PM on 09/05/2011

Why are you linking to stuff from 2007 and 2008 as if it were current?

And, in any event, do you not understand that in a noisy system like climate, periods of cooling in spite of a long-term warming trend are not only expected, they're statistically inevitable?

Here is the temperature record since 1975:

http://bit.ly/oD9ZTN

The long blue line is the overall trend since 1975. The tiny green line is what your links are talking about--the 2004-2008 trend.

Do you really not see how ridiculous it is to try to pretend that this was meaningful cooling?

[banana republican]

01:34 PM on 09/05/2011

If you had a satellite picture of the Great Lakes Region from 12 thousand years ago, all you would see is a sheet of ice. The picture would prove three things. (1) The Planet is warming, and (2), mankind doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it, and (3) he certainly can't do anything to stop it.

[chrisd3]

03:01 PM on 09/05/2011

There's no logic to any of that. The fact that the Earth has warmed and cooled in the past--a fact that no one disputes-- says nothing about why it is warming now, whether we have anything to do with it, or whether we can do anything about it. It is completely irrelevant to all of those questions.

[Max Amillion Gesenhues]

03:32 PM on 09/05/2011

Seems to have at least some logic to me.

[canuckhoser]

03:07 PM on 09/05/2011

How do you know there was an ice sheet 12 thousand years ago? Were you there? Or would you have to rely on *science* to prove it?

[luis ametxazurra]

09:27 AM on 09/05/2011

Put a large block of ice on a table and watch what happens when it melts. IT SHRINKS!!!
What those images prove is that the glaciers in Greenland are growing and as they are pushed out in their expansion off the continental shelf onto the sea where they are no longer supported by the underlying rock bed, their sheer weight causes them to break of and form ice bergs. Your pictures only prove that the planet is getting colder and that glaciers are expanding, Ergo: the planet is not getting warmer but rather, it is cooling!!

[reynoljh]

10:44 AM on 09/05/2011

It is infinitely more likely that the glacier is moving faster because of all of the meltwater, from warming, lubricating the base of the glacier. That's how glaciers move. The more lubrication, the faster they move. Furthermore, the ice was floating way out on the ocean for decades (centuries? millenia?); check the satellite photo archives.

[luis ametxazurra]

09:46 PM on 09/05/2011

New ice is starting to form in the Arctic. Looks like 2011 has a possibility of becoming the shortest melt season (time from peak to minimum) on record. Longer polar melt seasons are a fundamental tenet of global warming theory.

See chart:
http://www.real-science.com/uncategorized/shortest-arctic-melt-season-record?utm_source=fe edburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Real-Science%2Ffeed+%28Real+Science% 29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[luis ametxazurra]

01:53 PM on 09/07/2011

You just don't get it or don't want to. Glaciers were moving during the entire last Ice Age when, by definition, it was very much colder than today. The weight of the glaciers pressing down at the rock bed generates heat which melts the ice at the base and that lubricates the glaciers so that ther were able to grow and blanket the entire Northern Hemisphere all the way from New Jersey to Seattle, WA under a mile of ice. When the planet began warming (before SUV's and coal fired plants BTW) the glaciers melted and they RECEDED. The evidence is so obvious and overwhelming your argument is reduced to absurdity or as the saying goes :"reductum ad absurdum".

[luis ametxazurra]

12:11 PM on 09/05/2011

Your response is illogical, as Mr. Spock would say. The greenies constantly show us a pictures of receding glaciers, and there are some that are indeed receding, and they inevitably portrays a very visible glacial morraine and hundreds of yards in the distance a shrunken glacier. It is normal that at the base of a glacier, because of the enormous weight of the ice mass pressing on the solid rock beneath, for that pressure to generate heat and melt and that does indeed facilitate the flow of the ice. The more pressure overhead (from ice) the greater the pressure and hence the greater the heat generated. If ice is melting, the glacier is contracting and the weight at the base of the glacier is diminishing and hence forward movement slows and even stops. When the glacier is growing and advancing it eventually pushes out beyond the continental mass beneath and projects over water. Since icebergs only show less than 10% of their mass above the water line, imagine the enormous now leveraged weight bearing down of that portion of the glacier that projects beyond the land mass.. Hence it breaks off and floats to sea. You have to use logic and physics because hype wont cut it.

[apduncan]

01:23 PM on 09/05/2011

How do you explain, then, the receding glaciers in tropical zones?

Your argument should apply to the glaciers in South America and Africa where glaciers are receding and disappearing. If your argument is right that shouldn't be happening.

Or are you a Republican that spews lies but gets confused with facts?

[lbsaltzman]

08:47 PM on 09/05/2011

What you have to do is not engage in amateur guesses. Read the science and learn what is really happening from all the scientists who have done the research. Otherwise get a PhD. in glaciology and prove the rest of the scientists wrong.

[Gurinder Dhillon]

03:17 AM on 09/05/2011

Someone needs to show these pictures to Rick Perry and ask him how he can possibly defend his positions on climate change, I mean come on gimme a break if he can find a way to parry out of that question and still look intelligent enough to be the President of a condo association let alone the United States.

[captnbaja]

06:54 AM on 09/05/2011

They will be shown to Obama as soon as he comes off vacation.

[Gurinder Dhillon]

07:05 AM on 09/05/2011

He's been off vacation for a week and has taken less vacation time in his first two and a half years than all but one President since World War II.

[ga ra mu]

01:57 AM on 09/05/2011

If you consider it, the big picture explains much. The worst thing that happens if enviro-regs get thier way,but r wrong: a world of long term solutions to global energy and sustainable transportation, w the power out of the hands of the big oil refiners. Green jobs. Connected planet w updated systems. The option that the right is wrong , but gets their way: we see major storms more frequently,droughts,flooding, mudslides... ocean rising, shorelines decemated. Well i geuss we see a party of optimism vs. end times manifest dest..

[JADEONA]

06:26 PM on 09/04/2011

Its mother nature not global warming....

[caroleann926]

07:34 PM on 09/04/2011

It's Mother Nature responding with global warming from all the crap we emit into the air and how we rape and pillage the earth.

[Jeremyewilliams]

07:51 AM on 09/07/2011

Exactly, fanned.

[DHa7763100]

08:51 PM on 09/04/2011

How can you be so sure...are you environmental scientist??

[maxwells]

06:07 PM on 09/04/2011

From this week's Science News Service

Clouds intensify soot’s Arctic heating

Reining in soot production could dramatically slow Arctic warming, Mark Jacobson of Stanford University reported August 31 in Denver at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting. Soot’s presence in water droplets heats clouds much more than it does the black carbon particles between cloud droplets, new computer analyses show — which Jacobson says “helps to explain the burning off of clouds in polluted regions.” Once clouds disappear, more sunlight reaches the surface to melt sea ice and warm Arctic waters. But curbing all soot that now wafts into the Arctic could within 15 years eliminate 15 to 20 percent of the total warming contribution to the region, which could reduce the net temperature rise by 50 percent, his computer projections indicate. —Janet Raloff

[Richard2]

03:27 PM on 09/04/2011

But, as "autonomous mind" reports, the increasingly bitter winters that have resulted in more iced-over navigation passages. Having to deal with the real world, rather than the fantasy construct beloved of the warmists, the Swedish government thus wrote to US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to announce that the icebreaker Oden (pictured) will be kept at home and not be made available to support the work of the NSF in Antarctica, for the first time since 2006.

The detail comes from the journal Science, announcing the abrupt end of an ongoing agreement with the NSF for the lease of the Oden, the pride of the Swedish icebreaking fleet and also the world's most capable non-nuclear polar-class research vessel.

NSF has used the ship each winter since 2006–07 to clear a path through the sea ice to resupply McMurdo Station, the largest scientific outpost in Antarctica and the hub for US activities on the continent. The Swedish government decided that the Oden needed to stay at home this coming winter after two harsh winters disrupted shipping lanes in the region.

[Dallas Dunlap]

04:33 PM on 09/04/2011

They've had two harsh winters in Sweden. That's just weather. Besides, the Swedes got a better price and they are leasing the Oden to Sweden for the next five years.

[Richard2]

01:53 AM on 09/05/2011

If winter sea ice was becoming a thing of the past, there would be no need for Sweden to lease the ice breaker for the next five years, when they had not leased it previously. Winter sea ice in the northern hemisphere is becoming more of a problem, not less of a problem.

[maxwells]

06:09 PM on 09/04/2011

Hey, Richard2! How ya doin?

You still trolling for Heartland Institute?

What about all them bots ya blitzed on HuffPo? Pretty neat trick! How'd ya do that?

[Richard2]

02:49 PM on 09/04/2011

The great continental glacier that covered North America 15,000 years ago is gone? Where did it go?

The amount of glacier melting during the 20th Century was less than the average melting per century over the past 10,000 years, which is 100 centuries.

Is the amount of glacier melting in the first 10 years of the 21st Century, times 10 lower or greater than the average glacier melting per century over the past 100 centuries?

[lbsaltzman]

04:38 PM on 09/04/2011

You are asking trick questions with no real scientific value, so they are not worth answering.

[Jesuslandia]

08:22 PM on 09/04/2011

In other words, you can't handle the truth.

[Richard2]

09:12 PM on 09/04/2011

Just returned from Glacier Bay National Park, in southeastern Alaska. The Park Service's map of the bay describes a rapid 18th Century advance of the glaciers down the valley, pushing the native people out of what is now the bay. This advance is described as caused by the Little Ice Age of the period. Then a sharp glacial retreat in the 19th and then the 20th Centuries. However, the "ice lines" for several major glaciers indicate modest advances since the early 20th Century, or no recent change. Others indicate a continuing retreat.

The Park Service appears to support the view that the Little Ice Age occurred in western North America, not just in Europe.

[Dallas Dunlap]

08:05 AM on 09/05/2011

Obviously, since the continental glaciers melted away, there was a high rate of glacial retreat at the end of the ice age. What makes it a trick question is averaging over 10,000 years. A more meaningful comparison would be comparing glacial retreat in the 21st century to some other 11 year period.

[tomeb]

01:47 PM on 09/04/2011

And Global warming is a myth.. Check out HAARP....

[captnbaja]

11:34 PM on 09/06/2011

You check out HARP they have an open house every year if you really want to know what goes on there.

[No more Kool Aid]

08:07 AM on 09/04/2011

Why do We call Greenland ..Greenland? Just Sayin!

[Roadrun]

10:20 AM on 09/04/2011

Google Lief Erickson. He named the green land Iceland (actually he named it Island but Americans won't pronounce that spelling correctly) and the ice land Greenland so that when he went to work marauding and plundering bad people wouldn't go and take his women.

It works to this day.

-- Even though I have seen it listed as Island on maps I think old Lief actually named it something like Aktheficanhavenfluger but nobody could pronounce that so people just call it Iceland instead.

[Dallas Dunlap]

04:32 PM on 09/04/2011

Greenland is still green along the southern coast.

[chrisd3]

02:58 PM on 09/05/2011

Well, not because it was ever green.