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Climate change: Warmth shatters section of Greenland ice shelf - BBC News
Sep 14, 2020 53 secs

A big chunk of ice has broken away from the Arctic's largest remaining ice shelf - 79N, or Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden - in north-east Greenland.

Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden is roughly 80km long by 20km wide and is the floating front end of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream - where it flows off the land into the ocean to become buoyant.

The ice feature was already heavily fractured in 2019; this summer's warmth has been its final undoing.

"79N became 'the largest remaining Arctic ice shelf' only fairly recently, after the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland lost a lot of area in 2010 and 2012," explained Prof Jason Box from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS).

The Northeast Greenland Ice Stream drains about 15% of the interior ice sheet.

Zachariae has already lost most of its floating ice shelf area.

July witnessed another large ice shelf structure in the Arctic lose significant area

This was Milne Ice Shelf on the northern margin of Canada's Ellesmere Island

Milne was the largest intact remnant from a wider shelf feature that covered 8,600 sq km at the start of the 20th Century

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