Sitting stuck on the bottom at 80 meters depth for the past week off St. Anthony’s, PII-A is in the move again heading south by south-east (click on image to enhance). It is melting only at the surface, breaking off smaller icebergs, because the ocean water temperatures near the bottom are colder than the freezing point of fresh water. The ocean’s salinity ensures that the freezing point of sea water is close to -1.7 C while that of fresh water is 0.0 C. More details on how the waters off Labrador and Newfoundland looked like in 2009 within a climate context is Colbourne et al. (2010) (big file, slow link).
Petermann Ice Island PII-A on Aug.-7 and Aug.-14, 2011 off St. Anthony, Newfoundland over contours of bottom depth. Black dotted line is the track until Aug.-9, 2011 from a beacon on PI-A
Icy Seas 