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.
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.
Video Credit: Denise Holland, Logistics Coordinator/NYU’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
