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NASA images reveal two massive glaciers breaking apart in Greenland mongabay.com August 22, 2008
Jason Box, an associate professor of geography at Ohio State, and his colleagues says that an eleven-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) piece of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland broke away sometime between July 10th and by July 24th. Petermann glacier has a floating section of ice 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide and 50 miles (80.4 kilometers) long, making it the Northern hemisphere's longest floating glacier. Box says that while the break-up is massive, he is especially worried about what appears to be a crack further back from the margin of the glacier.
At the same time that Petermann has splintered, the margin of Jakobshavn glacier has retreated further inland than it has at any time in the past 150 years. Jakobshavn has lost at least three square miles (10 square kilometers) since the end of the last melt season, after losing 36 square miles (94 square kilometers) miles of ice between 2001 and 2005. Jakobshavn alone is responsible for producing at least ten percent of the icebergs calving off into the sea from the entire island of Greenland, making it the island's most productive glacier.
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