As July 2011 progressed, the Petermann Ice Island-A (PII-A) continued drifting southward in the Labrador Sea. When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on July 27, 2011, PII-A was about 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Newfoundland.
PII-A is a remnant of an ice island that calved off the Petermann Glacier along the northwestern coast of Greenland in August 2010. That ice island was about four times the size of Manhattan. In July 2011, PII-A was roughly the size of just one Manhattan, and the Canadian Ice Service reported that the ice island continued losing mass through breakup and melt. The ice island continued to pose a potential hazard to shipping lanes and offshore oil rigs, according to news reports.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
