Ilulissat Icefjord

Coordinates: 69 ° 9 '32 "  N , 50 ° 30' 23"  W.

Ilulissat Icefjord​

Greenland

Ilulissat Icefjord, Greenland (1999)

The Ilulissat Icefjord is located on the west coast of Greenland .

Fjord and glacier

The adjacent to the town of Ilulissat ( Dan. Jakobshavn ) named Icefjord ( Groenlandica. : Kangia ) is 250 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland's west coast. It extends over 40 kilometers in length and is seven kilometers wide. At its landward end is the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier , one of the most active glaciers on earth. Its flow rate is around 20 meters per day, which corresponds to an annual amount of ice of 35 cubic kilometers.

Due to the brisk glacier activity, the fjord is completely filled with ice and icebergs. The so-called calving of the glacier mostly occurs during the summer. Huge icebergs with a size of up to 700 meters (10 to 12% of them above water) break away from the edge of the glacier. The icebergs need around 12 to 15 months to reach the sea-side end of the fjord. The glacier is estimated to discharge between five and 10% of the amount of water that Greenland releases into the sea.

At the end of the sea, 200 to 225 meters below sea level, there is a moraine deposit , the ice fjord bank, on which the larger icebergs stick under water. This is the cause of the accumulation of huge icebergs at this point. If the pressure from the flowing ice is high enough, smaller icebergs break off and flow into the open sea until the next one gets stuck. The current in Davidstrasse carries them further south. The Titanic collided with one of these icebergs in 1912.

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Changes in recent years

While the glacier remained stable from 1950 to 1999, the glacier tongue retreated by around ten kilometers between 2001 and 2007. At the same time, a team from the Technical University of Dresden noted an increase in the flow speed of the glacier from 2004 to 40 meters per day.

World natural heritage

Due to its enormous size and its great importance for glacier research, the Ilulissat Icefjord was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 . Thanks to their easy accessibility, the fjord and glacier have contributed significantly to research into the structure of the Greenland ice sheet , climate change and related geomorphological processes.

documentation

In the US documentary Chasing Ice from 2012, a smaller and a giant calving, which in reality lasts 75 minutes, are documented in around four minutes and a size comparison is made with the New York peninsula Manhattan.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Elsa Kusel-Fetzmann: On a great polar journey: Iceland - Spitzbergen - Greenland - Bering Sea. Association for the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge, 137–140, pp. 130–196, 2002, p. 160. PDF

Web links

Commons : Ilulissat  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Entry on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).
• NASA's glacier development page
• The Ilulissat Icefjord on www.groenlandinfo.de