Ice calving has resulted in the Jakobshavn glacier retreating inland, causing nearly 5 square miles of ice loss.

It is said that the 12.4km sq chunk is among the largest ever witnessed to peel off from the ice glacier’s front.

Radar images feature the glacier before and after the calving event which occurred between August 14 and 16.

The picture time collection means that between 27 July and 13 August, the glacier superior westward earlier than the calving prompted speedy retreat of the entrance to its place on 19 August. As the Post pointed out, calving (the separation of ice chunks from ice sheets and glaciers and subsequently falling into the sea) isn’t an uncommon phenomenon in this area of Greenland because of increasing sea and air temperatures in the region.

However, these estimates are preliminary, and satellite images from before and after an event can not show whether the ice was lost all at once or during a series of smaller events.

Jakobshavn Glacier drains 6.5 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet and a accounts for a tenth of the nation’s icebergs, totaling some 35 billion tons of floating ice.

The history of this last calving event is also revealed in images taken by Sentinel-2A on 6 and 16 August. The glacier’s been speeding up over the past few years – during summer 2012, Jakobshavn moved at a rate of 10 miles per year, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.