Published on 10 July 2019
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over a swirl of sea ice off the east coast of Greenland in the Irminger Sea, which is just south of the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland.
In this image captured on 9 June 2019, small pieces of sea ice, known as ice floes, trace out the ocean currents beneath, resulting in a large swirl-like feature of approximately 120 km in diameter.
This ice, which formed by freezing of the sea surface further north in the Arctic Ocean, has drifted southwards along the coast of Greenland before arriving at this location. The ice swirl is considered a typical eddy or vortex, commonly found in the summer marginal ice zone off the east coast of Greenland.