Arctic Update: Petermann’s travels

Satellite image from May 22, 2011, shows pieces of ice from the Petermann Glacier floating along Canada’s Labrador coast. The two largest pieces are circled. (Environment Canada) Back in August 2010, CWG helped break the story that a 97-square mile ice island had broken off from the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland. Since then, the massive chunk of ice has been on quite a journey through the cold Arctic waters of Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait: It hit the beach on a small island in the Nares Strait (between Greenland and Ellesmere Island), broke up into many smaller pieces, and picked up some hitchhikers in the form of iridium beacons used to track the pieces as they move with the winds and currents.

The Canadian Ice Service has tracked and chronicled the southward movement and fragmentation of the ice since it broke free in August. Ten months and nearly 1,600 miles later, several large icebergs, one with an area of approximately 63-square miles, are travelling southeastward along the Labrador coast, posing a possible hazard to northern shipping lanes.

Thankfully, tracking the larger icebergs is easy thanks to the beacons, and the International Ice Patrol monitors these shipping lanes to prevent possible mishaps. This satellite image from May 24-25 shows these pieces in among the drifting sea ice along the coast (As a side note, notice near the top of the image the various swirls and eddies in the current made visible by the ice).

These icebergs will continue to drift southward and break up/melt as they encounter warmer water and air. Though some of the larger ones, the 63-square kilometer piece for example, may hold together long enough to be seen off the coast of Newfoundland, and eventually out into the open North Atlantic before melting - the same area as the famous 1912 RMS Titanic disaster.