Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow

Scientists trawling through daily satellite images of Greenland’s glaciers have found break-ups at two more glaciers and a big scary crack (press release).

The Petermann glacier in northern Greenland lost 29 square kilometres of ice between July 10th and 24th. It is the longest floating glacier in the Northern Hemisphere, with a floating section 16 km wide by 80 km long. Its last major ice loss was between 2000 and 2001 when the glacier lost 86 square kilometers of floating ice.

The researchers have also reported that the massive Jakobshavn glacier, the fastest retreating glacier in the world according to AP, has lost at least 10 square kilometers since the end of the last melt season (see images here). They think it has not retreated this far for 4,000 to 6,000 years.

But the latest images also show a whopping big crack in the Petermann glacier, the location of which is illustrated below. If the crack turns into a break, that would be the loss of up to 160 square kilometers of floating ice. You can also see another image of the crack here [modis 1].

Why do we care? To find out what this means to us, read this article in Nature News by Alex Witze. To see what it looked like five years ago, check out this NASA site.

Photos: courtesy of Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University.