https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54127279
By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent
Sept. 13, 2020
A big chunk of ice has just broken away from the Arctic's largest remaining ice shelf - 79N, or Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden - in north-east Greenland.
The ejected section covers about 110 square km; satellite imagery shows it to have shattered into many small pieces.
The loss is further evidence say scientists of the rapid climate changes taking place in Greenland.
"The atmosphere in this region has warmed by about 3C since 1980," said Dr Jenny Turton.
"And in 2019 and 2020, it saw record summer temperatures," the polar researcher at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany told BBC News.
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The fast pace of melting in Greenland was underlined in a study last month that analysed data from the US-German Grace-FO satellites. These spacecraft are able to track changes in ice mass by sensing shifts in the pull of local gravity. They essentially weigh the ice sheet.
The Grace mission found 2019 to have been a record-breaking year, with the ice sheet shedding some 530 billion tonnes. That's enough meltwater running off the land into the ocean to raise global sea-levels by 1.5mm.
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