11 million ton iceberg threatens village in Greenland

Iceberg looming over Greenland village is spotted from space
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

14:54 EDT, 17 July 2018 | UPDATED: 15:09 EDT, 17 July 2018



BERLIN (AP) - An iceberg that has drifted perilously close to a remote Greenland village is so big it can be seen from space.

The European Space Agency released an image Tuesday showing the giant iceberg just off the coast of Innaarsuit in northwestern Greenland.

Dozens of residents were evacuated to higher ground last week due to concerns that the 11 million-ton iceberg could break apart, creating high waves that could wash away coastal buildings.

The image captured July 9 by ESA's Sentinel-2 satellites also shows several other large icebergs in the vicinity.

Separately, Greenland broadcaster KNR published a video taken by a resident showing a time lapse of the huge iceberg drifting past the village. KNR reported that strong winds and elevated tides moved the iceberg northward, away from the harbor, over the weekend.

Wow, its like nature fighting back

The concern is for tsunamis...if, like, a cliff fell away.  One TV personality expressed concern that the iceberg might raise the sea level.

Uh...it's already floating in the water.  Calving ice only displaces water when it loses the support of land beneath.  Actually, because ice is ever so slightly less dense than liquid water, ice melting actually lowers water surface level slightly

So icebergs melting due to Global Warming do not raise Sea levels ?

nicko wrote:So icebergs melting due to Global Warming do not raise Sea levels ?

Correct.  It's ice sheets and glaciers that are the problem.  Ice over land pushes to the sea just as do rivers, only they are called glaciers.  When they reach the sea, they calve and create icebergs.  Once icebergs are floating, they have already raised sea levels.

Global warming causes the ice over land to melt, increasing the process, adding to the world wide sea level. Icebergs, which are part of the process, are the 'done' part of the deal.

nicko wrote:So icebergs melting due to Global Warming do not raise Sea levels ?

Over 90% of the ice up in the Arctic Circle is already "floating" over water (not on land..) --   as with icebergs (i.e. ice floes that have broken away from the ice sheet, or "calved"..) with some 90% of that ice underwater, the volume of that ice has already displaced its own volume of seawater...

Also remember that water expands as it freezes, so that melting icebergs don't raise the sea level, as it isn't increasing the total volume of water, but simply changing its state from solid to liquid..

It is quite a different situation, though, when you look at the icebergs that originate in Antarctica, or if you look at increasing snow-melts and larger glacial ice-melts in places like New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Canada, Russia, Greenland, the Himalaya  --  because that ice and snow is located over land, and not floating in the oceans to begin with, it will contribute to 'rising sea levels' eventually, when the melting water runs down to the sea.

Yes, it makes a difference what part of the world you are talking about.  There are five oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern and Arctic.  There is no Antarctic Ocean, because there is land--an entire continent, in fact--under the south pole ice.

Most of the north pole (Arctic) ice is already floating.

It’s a thing of majestic beauty, though.

eddie wrote:It’s a thing of majestic beauty, though.  

It really is. I was just telling you that I would move there if the thing would just sit there like that. And now I'm saying it here.