Petermann Glacier

Satellite photo

The Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland is a situated, about 1300 square kilometers large glacier, which is named after the German geographer August Petermann.

He is one of 130 ice fields that are fed from the Greenland ice sheet. A special feature is the approximately 70 km long and 15 km wide glacier tongue floating in water that fills the Petermann Fjord. Together with the southern Humboldt Glacier, the catchment area is 121,000 km ², representing 10 % of the total area of the catchment areas of all Greenland glacier. In the summer of 2009, the glacier was investigated in detail in the context of a supported among others by Greenpeace expedition. On August 5, 2010, the glacier gained international attention when it came to his tongue for the most Eisabbruch in the Arctic since 1962. A 260 km ² large iceberg (more than three times the area of Lake Chiemsee ) broke off from the ice tongue and drifted into the open sea. On July 19, 2012, came again to cancel a large ice tongue, the extent of which is given as twice the size of Manhattan Island. Since the ice in question was already in the water, this had no impact on the sea level.

In 2013 was discovered through the analysis of data of a specific ground radar, which penetrates the ice, one of the largest canyons under the northern ice sheet. This extends from the center of Greenland curved towards the North Coast, where it flows under the Petermann Glacier in the Hall Basin. The canyon is with a length of at least 750 km longer than the Grand Canyon. It is up to 10 km wide and up to 800 meters deep. The gorge is older than 1.6 million years old Greenland ice sheet.