Flying home from Europe to the west coast of North America, I always try to get a window seat on the starboard side for the incredible views of the east coast of Greenland. The couple times I’ve been fortunate enough to make this flight, winter or summer, it’s always been sunny and the sea shows incredible patterns of ice such as this.

This Sentinel-2 image was taken March 3rd of this year, just off of the King Frederick VI Coast. It turns out even finding the place names of these fjords, coastline and glaciers were not as simple as going on Google Maps, but rather a bit of a research project. This coastline is currently uninhabited, with incredibly sheer mountains and glacial flows making this region particularly harsh even by Greenland standards. Here, the cold East Greenland Current (EGC) sweeps down the coastline, carrying sea ice in beautiful braids such as this. Eventually, a warmer gulf stream current called the Irminger mixes with this flow, which when combined with climactic variations, ultimately limits the southern extent of this ice.

Below are two window seat images, taken 8/19 and 1/20.

Some information of Greenlandic place naming here.

Some more information on sea ice and the East Greenland Current here.

Satellite imagery from ESA’s Copernicus program. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.