Effects of global warming are becoming more and more evident with every passing day. Floods, heavier than normal rainfall, extreme heat, and melting polar ice caps are all taking place simultaneously around the world. Every now and then, there is a shocking video or photograph that offers a scary, disturbing view of what humans are doing to their home planet.
A massive chunk of ice from Greenland just disintegrated, crumbled, and fell away last month. In about 30 minutes, 7.2 km worth of ice simply fractured off Greenland's Helheim glacier and was caught on camera. The clip released by researchers from NYU has the entire event shrunken down to about 90 dramatic seconds.
Helheim glacier meets the Atlantic through eastern Greenland, says the release. The first chunk to break down was shaped, "like a pancake," says David Holland, who led the expedition. Soon after came "pinnacle icebergs", they are spike-like icebergs that tend to topple over and turn. "Every conceivable type of iceberg was produced".
In all, the total amount of ice that broke apart and fell into the ocean was over 7 km long, and this made the global sea levels rise. Only by a little, but it was significant.
"Global sea-level rise is both undeniable and consequential," observes David Holland.
"By capturing how it unfolds, we can see, first-hand, its breath-taking significance."
The process of ice sheets breaking apart and falling into the sea is called calving, notes the NYU report. This calving event began on June 22 at 11:30 p.m. local time and took place over approximately 30 minutes.
In 2017, a study estimated that the collapse of all of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely to result in a global sea level rise of about 10 feet. Looking at the Southern polar cap, the report points out that the Thwaites Glacier, of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has, as of now drained water that is about the size of Great Britain has already caused approximately a 4 percent global sea-level rise that has, so far doubled since the mid-1990s, reports the paper.
