Greenland Glacier breaks up on grand scale.

The Petermann glacier in Greenland was 186 miles (300km) long and 3,280ft (1000m) high and in the space of two years it has broken up almost completely.

Dr. Alan Hubbard, from the University of Aberystwyth has said he is ‘gob-smacked at the sheer scale of the break up. Many glaciers in Greenland are on a severe decline and it was expected that this glacier would break up, but even the scientists are amazed at the pace of change in Greenland.

Petermann is one of the larger glaciers in North West Greenland, and accounts for around 6% of the area of the Greenland Ice Sheet. GPS sensors set up on the sheet two years ago have detailed the break up, with a huge 77 square mile piece breaking off last year. The rest of the sheet is likely to go in the near future as Hubbard reports that there are significant cracks and rifts in the rest of the sheet

This is another in a list of ice sheets that have broken up in recent years. The Larson ice sheet in Antarctica was lost several years ago and the arctic ice is set to disappear in summer in the next decade.