Researchers learnt from satellite images that the world's fastest moving glacier has released a piece of ice measuring nearly 5 square miles over two days. Scientists say it's not wrong to call it the most significant calving events on record.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-2A weather satellites took the radar images of the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland between July 17 and August 19. The images clearly show that the massive glacier headed westward and later quickly retreated as a huge chunk fell off it front sometimes between August 14 and August 16.

Going by the estimates of the ESA, the thickness of the ice accounts for about 1,400 meters. It means that the volume of the gargantuan ice chunk is about 17.5 cubic km. The size is good enough to cover the island of Manhattan in layer of ice almost 1,000 feet deep.

It is not the first time when such an event has come into picture, like the one in July 2010, but the area of this calving is double the size of that event.

Greenland is crowned with the title of being the world's second largest ice body, and its melting has significant contribution of 40% to current sea level rise.

The Jakobshavn glacier is known to produce around a tenth of Greenland's iceberg. The glacier is the same that is believed to have produced the iceberg which destructed the Titanic in 1912.

Researchers estimate that the glacier has lost a total area of 12.5km.