(CNN) Something caught Stef Lhermitte's eye last week as he pored over satellite images of Northwest Greenland's Petermann Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in Greenland. "I saw a small line and thought 'that seems new,' " said Lhermitte as he described the discovery he made, almost by accident, as he was testing a methodology to detect melt that requires making animated GIFs from the black and blue grainy images of Greenland captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 satellite. Lhermitte, an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, checked other satellite records and determined the crack showed up in July 2016, but to his knowledge, had not been noticed by anyone.Scientist's tweets lead to examination of a new crack in Greenland's Petermann GlacierGreenland's glaciers play a role in Earth's rising sea levels, so a crack is concerning
It is commonplace at many of _'s largest and most important glaciers, which is why research in these regions is so important.