Petermann Ice Island PII-A Within Three Miles off Newfoundland

The Petermann Ice Island PII-A is within 5 km (3 miles) from the shores off St. Anthony, Newfoundland. The MODIS Terra image of this morning shows PII-A sitting in water 100 meters (330 feet) deep. The island may be partially grounded, because its thickness is close to the water depth.

Petermann Ice Island PII-A 3 miles from shore.

Petermann Ice Island PII-A off Labrador and Newfoundland.

The dotted black line shows the track of PII-A until last week as determined from one of three beacons placed by the Canadian Coast Guard and Ice Service.

2 responses to “Petermann Ice Island PII-A Within Three Miles off Newfoundland

  1. It’s hard to tell at this scale, but is the size changing much? At what point is it likely to melt away?

    • True. The island is spawning its set of smaller “normal” ice bergs that break off. Over the last 2 months PII-A has reduced in size from ~59 km^2 (June-14), 57 km^2 (June-27), 53 km^2 (July-8), 50 km^2 (July-28), to about 43 km^2 (Aug.-3). It is melting at the surface all the time which is why people report waterfalls on it. Much of its mass is below the warm surface layer as the near bottom layers off Labrador and Newfoundland tend to be very cool, above the freezing point, so some melting takes place there also, but much less than at the surface.

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