The Milne Ice Shelf, Canada’s 4,000 year-old ice shelf, has crumbled in a report from researchers on Thursday 6 August.
Located on the Northwestern edge of Ellesmere Island, the Milne Ice Shelf has broken off into two large icebergs and a number of smaller ones, with the largest reaching the size of Manhattan. The collapse, which resulted in a 43% decrease in area over two days, has raised fresh concerns that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe.
Entire cities are that size. These are big pieces of ice. Without a doubt, it’s climate change.
Luke Copland, Glaciologist at the University of Ottawa
Temperatures in the region from May to early August have been 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 1980-2010 average stated Luke Copland, Glaciologist at the University of Ottawa. Copland’s entire research camp on the shelf was lost in the collapse.
Canada has been home to a large continuous ice shelf stretching across the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. Yet shelves in this territory of Nunavut have been collapsing at an increased pace over the last couple of decades, declares Adrienne White who is an analyst at the Canadian Ice Service. By 2005 this had fallen to six remaining ice shelves but ‘the Milne was really the last complete shelf’, states White.
Unlike sea ice, ice shelves are hundreds to thousands of years old, but are not as old as glaciers. Sharing a tweet about the loss, Arctic Today reported the following:
News of this collapse is a grave warning that global temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate.
This may also indicate the devastating loss of unique and biodiverse ecosystems. The Arctic has been bracing itself for a temperature rise which exceeds twice to three times the global average, according to a 2019 United Nations report.
