The largest island of our planet in Greenland is almost completely hidden under layers of ice. Glaciers here is 1 834 thousand square km. Glaciers descend to the ocean itself, and here from time to time from the main ice sheet chips huge chunks of icebergs and set sail on the ocean waves.
Traveling through this wild world, photographer Nick Kobbing tells the story of glaciers, the epicenter of global warming.
Petermann Glacier (one of the 130 glaciers covering Greenland) and ice-breaker Arctic Sunrise. The flat end of this glacier walks into the pool water Haslam. The length of the floating part is nearly 40 km., The ice is constantly thaw a little, and around the glacier, a small fringe of fresh water. This causes the different colors of water in the photo.
West coast of Greenland. The bright moon illuminates the bluish icebergs. If an iceberg has a rich blue color, then it would probably older than 1000 years.
Po Petermann glacier surface flows a whole river of melt water. Often the bed of the rivers into the ocean of icebergs breaking away.
Almost perfectly circular lake of meltwater on the glacier Peterman. Dark matter at the bottom of the lake – is expected to cosmic dust (special, very fine dust, mixed with mud). This substance absorbs the sun’s heat much faster than the surrounding white ice, as a result of ice melt, Thaw and deepens even more.
One of the faults Petermann Glacier. It is for such fractures of the glacier break off and float away as icebergs into the ocean. Every year the glaciers are losing more ice. The biggest breakaway from the glacier Peterson came at the turn of 2000 and 2001. Then the area of spalling was 86 square km.
The largest glacier east coast of Greenland Kangerdlugssuaq, and one of the 12 most fleeting, covered with deep cracks. Flow velocity of the glacier increases from year to year. For example, in 2005 it reached the value of 14 km per year, or 1.6 m per hour. If all the ice in Greenland melted, it would raise global sea level by 7 m.
From a height of 800 m icebreaker Arctic Sunrise was almost impossible to consider among the fragments of ice. Every year on the status of sea ice in Greenland are getting anxious.
Filled cracks of the glacier melt water Peterman. The picture was taken in the summer. Such cracks are formed due to the fact that the glacier is constantly flowing to the sea.
This huge iceberg calved from the glacier Humboldt, which descends into the bay Peabody in northwest Greenland. Usually above the water surface can be seen no more than one ninth of the total volume of the iceberg, the rest of this swinger hidden under water. Most icebergs in Greenland, it breaks off the west coast.
In this picture you can see how the glacier Humboldt broke a huge chunk of ice and crashed into small pieces. Width Humboldt Glacier is 110 km, and it goes to the sea wall of ice nearly the height of 100 m.
Type Petermann glacier, covered with lakes of melt water (puddles). This glacier is melting, not only because of the warm air. Its melting speed and heat fluxes propagating in his column. When the ambient temperature rises, the ice is under the puddles melt even more intense. The sudden cold snap surface puddles grasped icy crust, beneath which is kept warm, while the internal melting can continue.
Postoyannoe movement of water flow within the ice forms an unusual internal structure, which is clearly visible on this iceberg.