Unlike most EIS time-lapse video, this sequence was shot in close to real time and shows a nine-minute-long calving event (the collapse of glacier ice into the sea) at Store Glacier in Greenland. When the EIS team arrived in June 2007, EIS director James Balog noticed a promontory larger than the size of the U.S. Capitol Building, which he felt sure was going to break off sometime soon. About ten minutes after EIS team member Jeff Orlowski set up the video camera, the calving you see here occurred. After the first large chunk of ice splits off, another piece that was under it splinters below the waterline and pops up to the surface. Balog described the sound of the calving as “like 747s flying overhead.”

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