Article content

[np_storybar title=”Watch NASA animation of the giant ice fracture” link=”#1″]

[/np_storybar]

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or ‘Spectacular’ 1,000 kilometre-long crack rips across ice in Canada’s Beaufort Sea Back to video

The ice in Canada’s western Arctic ripped open in a massive “fracturing event” this spring that spread like a wave across 1,000 kilometres of the Beaufort Sea.

Huge leads of water – some more than 500 kilometres long and as much as 70 kilometres across – opened up from Alaska to Canada’s Arctic islands as the massive ice sheet cracked as it was pushed around by strong winds and currents.

“It took just seven days for the fractures to progress across the entire area from west to east,” said Trudy Wohlleben, senior ice forecaster at the Canadian Ice Service.

She said it was “spectacular” to watch from Ottawa, where she and her colleagues track the ice with satellites.

While ice fracturing is common in the Beaufort, few “events” have sprawled across such a large area so quickly or produced cracks as long and wide as those seen this spring, according to NASA Earth’s Observatory, which features the fractures this week.

Wohlleben noted that there was a similar event in last spring, and says both were related to way the ice, which moves in a clock-wise direction in the Beaufort, can suddenly start and stop moving depending on the weather conditions.