GroundReport | Canada | Three Arctic Ice Shelves Suffer Irreparable Damage

Three Arctic Ice Shelves Suffer Irreparable Damage

Finding Dulcinea September 05, 2008

In northern Canada, two ice shelves have lost large sections and another has gone adrift in the Arctic Ocean, according to the Discovery Channel.

“These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for 4,000 years are no longer present,” said Trent University’s polar expert Derek Mueller to Discovery.

The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, which broke in half in July, lost a piece measuring about 8.5 square miles (22 square km); the Serson Ice Shelf lost two sections of about 47 square miles (122 square km) total.

The Markham Ice Shelf, which is about 19 square miles (50 square km) or “almost the size of Manhattan,” according to The Times of London, broke off completely from its location near the coast of Ellesmere Island in August.

Researchers are warning that the recent losses in polar ice are a sign of what is in store for the rest of the planet in the future. “Cimate models indicate that the greatest changes, the most severe changes, will happen earliest in the highest northern latitudes,” according to Warwick Vincent, the director of Laval University's Centre for Northern Studies.

Satellite images confirm that the immediate area around the North Pole now consists mostly of fragile first-year ice. The surface ice that forms anew every winter is much more vulnerable to melting as temperatures rise in the summer, than thicker and denser multi-year ice that has survived several cycles of thawing and refreezing.