A dramatic reminder of how quickly polar landscapes can change: on 4 August, a 76 km² section of the floating ice tongue of Greenland’s Petermann Glacier broke away, forming a tabular iceberg roughly the size of Manhattan. Copernicus Sentinel-1 captured the glacier’s deterioration and fracture development in the days and months leading up to the calving event.
The event also highlights the value of high-frequency Earth observation for understanding glacier dynamics. Sentinel-1’s radar observations, including one-day repeat imagery from the Sentinel-1C/1D tandem phase, enabled researchers to monitor fracture propagation and ice deformation in near-real time. The work has been partially supported through the ARCTEX project.
Read the full story on ESA EO pages.