(Thumbnail image: National Geographic)

Get more multi-source news analysis from Newsy.com.

“By all accounts, a monster ice island. Four times the size of Manhattan and free to enter water south of the north poles. Scientists confirmed that the huge block of ice broke free off of Greenland’s Petermanns Fjord on Friday.” (The Times of Earth)

Scientists are now closely monitoring the birth of the massive new ice island to determine its effects on the environment. Others are left debating whether it was caused by global warming.

We’re analyzing coverage from Times of the Earth, CNN, Euronews and Fox News.

Over the course of the next three years, the island will melt as it floats down the east coast of Greenland, toward the Atlantic Ocean. Experts are concerned the island could block the Nares Straight or disrupt shipping routes further south, much like a what happened in 1962.

CNN mapped out the projected route of the island….

“Now the concern researchers have is if it starts to work its way down into this Baffin Bay Area, there’s a lot it can crash against. So this massive chuck of ice could then break up into other island and it’s possible that over time, it could take a couple of years, that it could, even as a huge chuck still or as various chucks, work its way into the Atlantic which can cause problems in the Atlantic, can affect travel, can affect all sorts of things, commerce.”

Icebergs breaking off of Greenland’s glaciers aren't that uncommon. Usually, 10,000-40,000 icebergs break from glaciers on Greenland’s west coast every year. But the size of this ice island is unusual. Euronews spoke to a glaciologist who says global warming has caused warmer ocean waters to melt the glacier.

“Ocean warming currents are circulating around the fjord here and eroding the underbelly of Petermann glacier at an incredible rate which is 25 times that of the surface melt. There’s been a revelation in the last couple of years in the role that warming oceans play in triggering the enhanced acceleration, break-up and thinning of these outlet glaciers.”

But on Fox News, the researcher who announced the discovery of the island, says events just like this happen all the time. 

“It has nothing or very little to do with the surface temperature and that’s what people always stress when talking about global warming. What’s important and significant here is that most of this specific glacier in northeastern green is melted from below by much much warmer oceans, but that is there all the time."

"…it only happens every 20, 30, 40, 50 years and it happened before in the early 60s.”

So what do you think is going to happen to the ice island? Is global warming the culprit?

Get more multi-source news analysis from Newsy.com.

WRITER: Madison Mack

PRODUCER: Newsy Staff