The Milne Ice Shelf is at the fringe of Ellesmere Island, in the sparsely populated northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. "Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up," the Canadian Ice Service said
- The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July, researchers said on Thursday.
"Entire cities are that size. These are big pieces of ice," said Luke Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa who was part of the research team studying the Milne Ice Shelf. That has threatened smaller ice caps, which can melt quickly because they do not have the bulk that larger glaciers have to stay cold. As a glacier disappears, more bedrock is exposed, which then heats up and accelerates the melting process.
Story continuesA research camp, including instruments for measuring water flow through the ice shelf, was lost when the shelf collapsed."It is lucky we were not on the ice shelf when this happened," said researcher Derek Mueller of Carleton University in Ottawa, in an Aug. 2 blog post."We saw them going, like someone with terminal cancer. It was only a matter of time," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
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