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Vast Ice Shelf collapses in Arctic
• Scientists blame global warming
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By
Honeyrose, contributing editor
Saturday,
30 December, 2006
The Ayles ice shelf, more than 40 square miles in extent, has broken clear from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.
The collapse was picked up by the Canadian Ice Service who have established that it occurred in the early afternoon of 13 August 2005 and took less than an hour. Scientists discovered the event by using satellite imagery. The area is so remote that it has only now been detected.
Within one hour of breaking free, the shelf had formed as a new ice island, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake. Ice shelves float on the sea, but are connected to land (as opposed to ice sheets, which are wholly land-based).
In the past five years, several ice shelves along the fringes of the Antarctic peninsula have started to become unstable or break up. The most spectacular was the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf, the size of Luxembourg, in Antarctica. (Follow our link to find out more about ice shelves).
Until now, there had not been a similar event among the six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic, which are packed with ancient ice that is more than 3,000 years old.
Scientists warn that this is a further indication that Arctic ice is melting at a much faster rate than expected. They ascribe the cause to the warming of the planet’s atmosphere.
Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa, said the break was likely due to a combination of low accumulations of sea ice around the mass’s edges as high winds blew it away, as well as one of the Arctic's warmest temperatures on record. The region was 5.4 degrees F above average in the summer of 2005, he said.
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