Six-kilometer long iceberg breaks off from Greenland glacier

In this Thursday, July 12, 2018 photo, a view of an Iceberg, near the village Innarsuit, on the northwestern Greenlandic coast. Scientists have watched an iceberg four miles long break off from a glacier. The iceberg is allegedly grounded on the sea floor. Residents in houses near the shore are prepared for an evacuation. (Karl Petersen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

London — An iceberg four miles (six kilometers) long has broken off from a glacier in eastern Greenland.
New York University professor David Holland, an expert in atmospheric and ocean science, has told The Associated Press that “this is the largest event we’ve seen in over a decade in Greenland.”

A June 22 video of the incident was taken by his wife, Denise Holland of NYU’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. They camped by the Helheim Glacier for weeks to collect data to better project sea level changes.

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

He said that “the real concern is in Antarctica, where … the stakes are much higher.”   /vvp