Greenland, the world’s largest island, is also covered in one of the earth’s two ice sheets. The other cloaks Antarctica. Greenland’s encompasses around 80 percent of the nation’s land mass, spanning more than 650,000 square miles. But it’s also melting at an accelerating rate due to climate change, losing an annual average of 261 gigatonnes—one gigatonne is equivalent to 2.2 trillion pounds—contributing to rising sea levels that impact the rest of the world. And Greenland’s massive icebergs are a reminder of this exceptional scale.
On July 25, a mammoth iceberg literally made waves as it flipped over off the coast of Ilulissat, Greenland. A video taken from town went viral online, and AfarTV, which has a livestream camera set up near the entrance to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Ilulissat Icefjord, captured the event in high definition. “Large icebergs can remain grounded or trapped near the mouth of the icefjord while they melt, fracture and become small enough to move into Disko Bay,” AfarTV says. “It is not known precisely when this particular iceberg originally separated from the glacier.”
