Giant Greenland Glacier Cracks Open Overnight – The Arctic’s biggest iceberg factory just hit overdrive.

It used to be that when a glacier had a bad night it was like that proverbial tree falling in the forest.

Now ice researchers using several satellites to monitor Greenland’s most active glaciers almost daily have caught the north limb of the mother-of-all-Greenland glaciers, Jakonbshavn, retreating a mile in a night.

"A few nights ago a crack opened up," said Tom Wagner, cryospheric program scientist at NASA. "Two nights later (July 6) the whole (gosh darned) thing breaks off and flows away." The lost portion has been described as about an eighth the size of Manhattan Island and set a new record for the retreat of that glacier.

By Larry O’Hanlon

Full Story: http://news.discovery.com/earth/greenland-glacier-warming.html