Rink Glacier is well above the Arctic Circle and temperatures dive down to -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 Celsius) for weeks at a time. Yet all through the winter, even with the forebay crammed full of sea ice, Rink Glacier still calves off huge ice islands that spin around for weeks before they are ground up by the sea ice and disappear. The process of calving is similar to what happens at Columbia Glacier in Alaska, except that because it’s so much colder at Rink, the great ice islands survive longer. At Columbia they break down to smaller sizes within minutes.

Previous video / Next video