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Summer thaw was underway on the fringe of eastern Greenland when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and captured this image on July 13, 2007. Inland (left), snow and ice make a white blanket, while closer to sea (center and right) the annual snow has retreated from much of the rocky coastline and from the surface of some glaciers, which appear slightly gray. In the fjords, meltwater carrying finely ground sediment, crushed by the movement of glaciers over rock, colors the water turquoise. Sea ice (lower right) has fractured into geometric blocks, and small chunks of ice are scattered in some fjords like confetti. At far right, ice has disintegrated or been crushed into such small pieces that it looks like froth or foam swirling in the waters of the Greenland Sea. This image is centered on a section of Greenland's eastern coast called Scoresby Land. Located about mid-way along the island's eastern coastline, the area is de...