Video Description – Jakobshavn Glacier Calving Event

Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland (Greenlandic: Sermeq Kujalleq, Danish: Jakobshavn Isbræ), during a large calving event in 2008, filmed by Dr. Jason Amundson, University of Alaska Southeast. The Jakobshavn ice stream feeds the Ilulissat Icefjord, the largest ice stream in Greenland, just outside of  the Ilulissat on the west coast and just south of the Arctic Circle. It is the largest outflow ice stream of the Greenland Ice Sheet at about five miles across and 3,000 feet deep where the stream enters the ice sheet from the terminus of the icefjord. The Jakobshavn has increased its ice discharge since warming began and  until about 2010 the glacier reached a pinning point where the icefjord entered the ice sheet and temporarily stalled, but re-accelerated in 2018 and the calving front has now significantly penetrated the ice sheet. This time motion video compresses forty minutes of calving into forty seconds. When large bergs calve and scrape the bottom of the icefjord, they can create a 5.0 magnitude earthquake. Note the debris on the bottom of the largest calved berg in the video. The importance of the Jakobshavn glacier to climate science is such that the icfjord was named a world heritage site in 2004.