Latest Nares Strait Stories

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering in University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, reports the calving of an island two times the size of Manhattan on July 16, 2012, in his “Icy Seas” blog. Muenchow credits Trudy Wohleben of the Canadian Ice Service for first noticing the fracture. MODIS, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA’s Terra...

A massive iceberg has broken off from a glacier in Greenland and has started drifting south into shipping lanes and waters occupied by oil rigs, according to a recent Associated Press (AP) report.On Tuesday, AP writer Karl Ritter noted that the iceberg, which detached from the Petermann glacier in Greenland last week, was "an island of ice more than four times the size of Manhattan."He also noted that the 260 square kilometer mass could cause "untold damage" as it drifts...

Envisat has been observing a rare event in the Arctic since early August - a giant iceberg breaking off the Petermann glacier in North-West Greenland.The Petermann glacier is one of the largest glaciers connecting the Greenland inland ice sheet with the Arctic Ocean. Upon reaching the sea, a number of these large outlet glaciers extend into the water with a floating 'ice tongue'.The ice tongue of the Petermann glacier was the largest in Greenland, with an extension of about 70 km until early...

A University of Delaware researcher reports that an "ice island" four times the size of Manhattan has calved from Greenland's Petermann Glacier. The last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk of ice was in 1962."In the early morning hours of August 5, 2010, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan was born in northern Greenland," said Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean, and...

In 2007, the Arctic lost a massive amount of thick, multiyear sea ice, contributing to that year's record-low extent of Arctic sea ice. A new NASA-led study has found that the record loss that year was due in part to the absence of "ice arches," naturally-forming, curved ice structures that span the openings between two land points. These arches block sea ice from being pushed by winds or currents through narrow passages and out of the Arctic basin.Beginning each fall, sea ice...