Tourists in Iceland were met by the unexpected scene of an iceberg calving during a tour of the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon.
The dramatic moment was captured in a viral video posted by @sabrina.gss and has racked up 1.1 million views since it was shared on July 9.
The caption of the post says: “Sooo this happened while we were doing a boat tour in the Glacier Lagoon.”
In the clip, tourists can be heard marveling at the sight of the imposing iceberg, with one person saying “oh my god” just as a chunk of ice breaks off into the water.
Professor Mauri Pelto, a member of the science advisory board for NASA Earth Observatory and the director of the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project, told Newsweek that “this is quite a common occurrence even in this lagoon,” noting that “in areas of icebergs, there are constant occurrences like this.”
As the video begins, he noted, “you can see the former water level grooves where the iceberg had been in the water exposed,” indicating that the iceberg had already begun rotating.
Sooo this happened while we were doing a boat tour in the Glacier Lagoon. #wheniniceland #jokusarlon #glacierlagoon #zodiacboattour #icebergs #visiticeland2025 #thingstodoiniceland
Pelto, who is a professor of environmental science at Nichols College, has spent 40 years monitoring the response of glaciers to climate change, having spent every summer in the field since 1981.
He explained: “The icebergs melt more underwater than above, which leads them to rotate, this movement destabilizes the icy towers. It has been a warm summer in Iceland, which would speed up this process. I reported on an ice cap that lost all of its snow cover by mid-August—Prándarjökull.”
Iceberg calving, where sections of ice break off from glaciers, is a natural process that “takes place gradually, even though the video appears to show it all happening suddenly,” Max Dugan-Knight, a climate data scientist at Deep Sky Research, told Newsweek. “Calving can sometimes lead to icebergs flipping and readjusting in the water after breaking off.”
Glaciers could lose as much as 40 percent of their mass by 2100 under global temperature rises of 1.5 to 4 degrees Celsius, according to a NASA-funded January 2023 study published in Science.
Glaciers in Iceland were noted to make up around 10 percent of the country’s area in a November 2020 study in Frontiers in Earth Science. An inventory taken in 2000 showed that there were 300 glaciers in Iceland.
A 2017 update of this inventory showed that “some tens of those had disappeared or were categorized as dead ice,” according to the researchers.
Calving can be caused by various physical processes, including melting as a result of the the glacier meeting the relatively warm lagoon water, as well as stress from tides and waves, Dugan-Knight noted.
“The calving event shown in the video is part of a natural process, but climate change is having an impact on glaciers and ice sheets, which is accelerating the process shown,” the climate data scientist said.
Citing data from the Sea Ice Index of the National Snow and Ice Data Center that was analyzed by Deep Sky Research, Dugan-Knight said “Deep Sky Research tracks Arctic sea ice extent and as you can see, there was 37 percent less sea ice in September 2024 than there was 40 years ago.”
“Warmer ocean temperatures and air temperatures accelerate melting and may make videos like this more common,” he said.
Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment via TikTok. This video has not been independently verified.
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References
Aðalgeirsdóttir, G., Magnússon, E., Pálsson, F., Thorsteinsson, T., Belart, J. M. C., Jóhannesson, T., Hannesdóttir, H., Sigurðsson, O., Gunnarsson, A., Einarsson, B., Berthier, E., Schmidt, L. S., Haraldsson, H. H., & Björnsson, H. (2020). Glacier Changes in Iceland From ∼1890 to 2019. Frontiers in Earth Science, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.523646
Rounce, D. R., Hock, R., Maussion, F., Hugonnet, R., Kochtitzky, W., Huss, M., Berthier, E., Brinkerhoff, D., Compagno, L., Copland, L., Farinotti, D., Menounos, B., & McNabb, R. W. (2023). Global glacier change in the 21st century: Every increase in temperature matters. Science, 379(6627), 78–83. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo1324
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