Massive pieces of Canada’s northern ice shelf broke away in early August, a team of researchers reported on Tuesday. The 50-square-kilometre Markham shelf, located on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island, is now floating free in the Arctic ocean along with a larger portion of the Serson shelf.
Meanwhile, remnants of the Ward Hunt ice shelf, which attracted international publicity when it collapsed in July, continue to float away from the Ellesmere shore.
Collapses like those this summer worry scientists since shelf ice, unlike more ephemeral sea ice, can be as much as 4,500 years old and 40 metres thick.
Dr. Derek Mueller, the Roberta Bondar Fellow in Northern and Polar Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., said recent losses of shelf ice — totalling 214 square kilometres this summer in the Canadian north — are almost certainly the result of global warming.
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