WASHINGTON — In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.
Jason Box, a glacier expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, who spotted the changes, predicts disintegration of a major portion of the Petermann glacier, the Northern Hemisphere’s largest floating glacier, within the year.
If it and other northern Greenland glaciers melt faster, then it could speed up sea-level rise.
“As we see this phenomenon occurring further and further north — and Petermann is as far north as you can get — it certainly adds to the concern,” said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado.
