back to article Ice island snaps off Greenland: Just a fifth the size of 1962 whopper

A vast island of ice has broken off a glacier in Greenland: but it is just one-fifth the size of one which snapped off from Canada in 1962 and half the size of one seen in 2010. The new monster iceberg is assessed as covering 46 square miles by professor Andreas Muenchow of the University of Delaware, which he calculates as …

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  1. Pen-y-gors

    Could you please use standard El Reg land-area units, i.e, the milli-Wales rather than these odd colonial units of the 'Manhattan' (I thought that was a cocktail)?

    Or perhaps the Anglesey? I reckon this iceberg is about 0.17 standard Ynys Môns - and the whoppa from 1962 was nearly a whole Anglesey (does rather put it in context).

    1. Adam Nealis
      IT Angle

      Why not football pitches and Olympic swimmimg pools?

      The latter for volume of course.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why not football pitches and Olympic swimmimg pools?

        @ Adam Nealis - because 25,000* football pitches doesn't mean much to anyone.

        (* that's a complete finger in the air guesstimation)

      2. King Jack
        Holmes

        Re: Why not football pitches and Olympic swimmimg pools?

        There is no standard size for a football pitch. I mean football as in not American Football.

    2. TeeCee Gold badge

      "...a four-Manhattan berg...."

      I just assumed that the Manhattan was a unit of thickness. Four Manhattans would be incredibly thick......

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Cut-out-and-keep"..

      Lucy Sherriff's piece was invaluable, a contribution to human-kind that should have been given more prominence than rumours about fundamental particles..

      However, for convenience in future, could you guys please make it available as a downloadable pdf?

      It's quite time-consuming to have to go through the whole vid, looking for a correct figure. (As the contributor of this piece clearly found, and, shockingly, simply didn't bother to do. )

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Conversions to Reg scale...

      http://reg.cx/1R1q

      (as previously, a service to mankind.)

      However, the question of why the contributor didn't use correct measures remains?

      1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

        Re: Conversions to Reg scale...

        "However, the question of why the contributor didn't use correct measures remains?"

        We're beta-testing a new unit. Standby for action.

        C.

  2. Tim of the Win
    Happy

    Yeah, might not be warming that causes ice to melt. Could be someone with a huge gritter, or a russian nuclear powered ice breaker nefariously creating huge icebergs to disrupt western shipping.

    1. Mad Mike

      I think you're misrepresenting here. The comments about whether warming was to blame were from the scientist releasing the report, not Lewis. Also, he only stated that air temperature was not likely to be to blame and that there was not enough of a record to know if sea temperatures had risen or not.

      In short, he seems to be saying nobody knows if this is to do with warming (of whatever sort) and whether its particularly big or small or unusual even. If we've had similar at least twice before (especially one in 1962), maybe this just happens occassionally? Mind you, the other was in 2010, so two have come close together.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pimms o'clock already?

    Jolly nice of Tarquin to get the ice but he always did have a problem with portion control. You can probably guess that Tarquin only got a Geography A-level....and didn't realise you can more easily get ice from the local supermarket.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    pictures

    here earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=78556&src=eorss-iotd

    1. Adam Nealis

      Re: pictures

      Nice link.

      From the article (my emphasis)

      "Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, noted that this calving event marks a retreat of the Petermann Glacier “farther back than historical calving fronts.” A comparison of this event to the 2010 event shows that this iceberg broke off the glacier tongue farther upstream. The crack along the southern margin of this new iceberg, however, has been visible in satellite imagery for several years. That rift was first identified in 2001."

      I wonder how far back "historical calving fronts" data go?

  5. Gordon 10
    Trollface

    Is Lewis unwell?

    He missed the chance to wind up the AGW-ists.

    1. ukgnome
      Joke

      Re: Is Lewis unwell?

      He's been sick for a while

    2. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Is Lewis unwell?

      He certainly missed the chance to talk about the recent paper which found no evidence of any recent increase in global water vapour - since that's a critical requirement for the CO2 warming mechanism and it's been shown not to exist I would say it was now game, set and match to the deniers....

      Vonder Haar, T. H., J. Bytheway, and J. M. Forsythe (2012), Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations, Geophys. Res. Lett.,doi:10.1029/2012GL052094, since you ask....

      1. GrantB
        Boffin

        Re: Is Lewis unwell?

        I thought Lewis believed that climate scientists were part of some grand conspiracy, and the results could not be trusted?

        That aside, the Geophys. Res. Letters* is a well respected publication with a number of papers that support the AGC theory with actual evidence, so typically you pick one paper and use that single paper to suggest that it was "game, set and match to the deniers" and ignore every other paper in the same journal.

        And what does the paper show? Well the paper is about improving measurements by tweaking data using algorithms (something that denialists tend to criticise) and they only appear to have analysed a bit over 20 years of data. The paper is not trying to analyse water vapour trends - just to improve the techniques of measurement.

        They also say " Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data". Which somehow becomes 'shown not to exist' - a non-sequitur.

        *And I also found this post:

        It turns out that the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres recently published a paper on the “recent changes in tropospheric water vapor over the Arctic” (HTML version not behind a paywall: http://www.agu.org/journals/jd/jd1210/2011JD017421/index.shtml).

        Their conclusions: “statistically significant trends in precipitable water over the Arctic as assessed over the period 1979–2010 are mostly positive. … [The results are] consistent with a changing Arctic environment with a warmer atmosphere that can carry more water vapor, higher north Atlantic sea surface temperatures and reduced sea ice extent

  6. Luke McCarthy
    Stop

    The Register needs a filtering system

    So I can filter out all the Lewis Page posts.

    1. hplasm
      Meh

      Re: The Register needs a filtering system

      The Register needs a filtering system for trolls at least.

      1. NomNomNom

        Re: The Register needs a filtering system

        yea sure lets not feed the trolls so a whole subspecies of mythical creature dies off. you sicko.

      2. darkmage0707077
        Joke

        Re: The Register needs a filtering system

        They have one. It's called the "downvote".

  7. John A Blackley

    How refreshing

    To see news about an ice event without the Chicken Little sensationalism.

  8. Identity

    ...or denialism.

    1. John A Blackley

      Do you see me deny anything in my post or are you having a gas attack?

      1. Identity
        Facepalm

        Not your post — Lewis's. There is no denialism there —just reportage— which I, for one, applaud.

  9. Tom 7

    so warm air doesnt melt ice?

    that’s a relief!

  10. Jelliphiish
    Thumb Up

    mildly off-topic..

    but

    http://arcticready.com/social/gallery

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh! My! God!

    its gotta be, it has to be, its......... motherfuckin climate change and we are all gonna die!!!!!

    or alternatively

    its has to have, it must have, gosh its happened before - no cause for alarm....

    There, both sides now shut the fuck up about poxy climate change.

  12. Sentient

    I don't get it.

    Isn't there enough ice left for really big icebergs?

    Did it all melt then?

    So GW is a fact?

    So what is this article saying?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I don't get it.

      Seriously, what the fuck?!?

      Large chunks of ice break off things: "It must be global warming, the chunks are getting bigger!!!1!one!!eleven!"

      Small chunks of ice break off things: "It must be global warming, the chunks are getting smaller!!!1!one!!eleven!"

      Seriously, its exactly ****s (insert your own expletive, we like to offer choice) like you who give the whole GW argument a bad name.

  13. Stevie

    Wow!

    In and around the sea

    Mountains calve off of the ice

    And they float there.

    Heavy.

  14. a_mu

    cubics

    i wonder ,

    what is the volume of ice that has dropped off each 'month' .

    is thee as trend forming,

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