Global warning: Massive Canada Arctic ice shelf breaks away

A huge 19 square mile ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic has broken away with the remaining shelves shrinking at a 'disturbing' rate, scientists said today.



They believe it is the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region.



The Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August.



The scientists also found two large chunks totalling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 per cent.

A huge chunk of ice is shown drifting off the coast of Ellesmere Island, Canada about 500 miles from the North Pole. Scientists warn of the 'massive and disturbing' rate of accelerating climate change in the remote region

‘The changes ... were massive and disturbing,’ said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked to global warming.

‘These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,’ said Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario.

‘These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present,’ he warned.

Mueller said that the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along Ellesmere Island this summer totalled 83 square miles - more than three times the area of Manhattan island.

The figure is more than 10 times the amount of ice shelf cover that scientists estimated would vanish from around the island this summer.



‘Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses,’ said Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa.

‘Extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years,’ he said.

The first sign of serious recent erosion in the five shelves came in late July, when sheets of ice totalling almost eight square miles broke off the Ward Hunt shelf. Since then that shelf has lost another 8.5 square miles.

Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totalling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left of that shelf today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 300 square miles.

Scientists say the ice shelves, which contain unique ecosystems that had yet to be studied, will not be replaced because they took so long to form.