Watch: Capture of 4-mile iceberg breaking in Greenland

A team of NYU scientists has captured on video a four-mile iceberg breaking away from a glacier in eastern Greenland. This phenomenon, known as "calving", is a force behind the rise of global sea water levels.

Arctic | 10/07/18

The resulting iceberg, broken off from Greenland’s Helheim Glacier, would stretch from lower Manhattan up to Midtown in New York City.

Global sea-level rise is both undeniable and consequential. By capturing how it unfolds, we can see, first-hand, its breath-taking significance,

...observes David Holland, a professor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematics and NYU Abu Dhabi, who led the research team.

The calving event captured on video began on June 22 at 11:30 p.m. local time and took place over approximately 30 minutes (the video has condensed the time of this occurrence to approximately 90 seconds).

A 2017 estimate suggested that a collapse of the entire the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet would result in a 10-foot-rise in sea level—enough to overwhelm coastal areas around the globe, including New York City.