Northwest Greenland is featured in this icy image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission.
Lying in the North Atlantic Ocean, Greenland is the world’s largest island and is home to the second largest ice sheet after Antarctica. Greenland’s ice sheet covers more than 1.7 million sq km and covers most of the island.
Ice sheets form in areas where snow that falls in winter does not melt entirely over the summer. Over thousands of years, layers of snow pile up into thick masses of ice, growing thicker and denser as the new snow and ice layers compress the older layers.
Ice sheets are constantly in motion. Near the coast, most of the ice moves through relatively fast-moving outlets called ice streams, glaciers and ice shelves.
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Image via European Space Agency
