Greenland’s plumbing helps prevent the glacier from splitting (Image: Ashley Cooper/SpecialistStock/SplashdownDirect/Rex Features)
IF SOME of the spectacular calving of ice shelves in Antarctica is down to global warming, then why did we not see break-ups on the same scale in Greenland, which is much warmer? It turns out that, counter-intuitively, it’s because Greenland is warmer.
When the ice sheets that blanket Antarctica and Greenland eventually meet the sea, they don’t immediately calve off and create icebergs. Instead, they extend out to sea as floating ice shelves while remaining joined to the ice sheets on land.
In 2002, a gigantic section…
