The world's largest ice island wanders over the ocean

After separating from Greenland, huge ice blocks drifted over the Arctic Ocean, threatening the safety of ships and oil rigs.

Two satellite images of Petermann glacier on July 28 (left) and 5/8 (right).In the picture on the right, one sees the island of about 260 square kilometers separated from the glacier.(Photo: AP )

An ice block of about 260 km2 separates from Petermann glacier on Greenland on August 5.AP said that in the process of moving across the Arctic Ocean, giant ice islands could collide with oil rigs and ships. With its enormous size, every collision can cause terrible damage. An iceberg of Greenland island sunk the legendary Titanic in 1912.

"The ice is so big that no one or anything can stop it from drifting , " said Jon-Ove Methlie Hagen, a glacier expert at the University of Oslo in Norway.

A giant block of ice on the ocean.(Photo: thesun.co.uk)

Many scientists are trying to determine the path of the iceberg island. It is currently moving towards the Nares Strait. This strait lies between the northwest coast of Greenland and Canada's Ellsemere island.

If the ice island enters the strait before winter comes (the winter here begins next month), it will be swept south by ocean currents and to the east coast of Canada. It will then enter the sea with many ships, boats and oil rigs near Canada's Newfoundland Island.

"That's where the ice island began to become dangerous," said Mark Drinkwater, a European Space Agency scientist.

Canada's ice research agency estimates the island's journey to Newfoundland will take about one to two years. During that process the ice island may break if it hits other islands or blocks. Fragments of ice will melt when they move to warm waters. However, the size of the broken ice sheets is still large enough to sabotage oil rigs near Newfoundland Island.

Thousands of ice sheets separate from Greenland each year. But this is the largest block of ice separated from the island since 1962. If the entire ice island melted into water, it would be equivalent to the amount of water in the Hudson River flow in the US for two years. That's the comment of Andreas Muenchow, a University of Delaware researcher in the United States.