- Nearly half of Canada’s last remaining intact ice farm has suddenly collapsed into the ocean.
- Satellite images show that it formed two icebergs, one of which is almost the size of Manhattan.
- The collapse comes in the afternoon of a summer that sees warmer temperatures, which scientists say is a result of climate change.
- A research camp was lost in the column.
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A massive chunk of Canada’s last fully intact ice scale, about 4,000 years old, has been torn down, reducing the shelf by more than half, scientists told last Sunday. After separating the board, the piece split in two, forming an iceberg about the size of Manhattan.
Climate change is likely to have caused the plank to collapse, researchers said. This summer, the region’s temperatures were 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average from 1980 to 2010, Luke Copland, a glacier professor at the University of Ottawa, told the Associated Press.
“Above normal air temperature, offshore wind, and open water for the ice rink are all part of the recipe for ice rink breaking,” the Canadian Ice Service said on Twitter.
A research camp was lost when the plank broke apart, like the last known epic half of the northern hemisphere, a kind of freshwater lake, flanked by ice, which sits on top of ocean water.
Ice researcher Adrienne White takes a photo of fractures in the plank. Luke Copland
‘Whole cities are so big’
Located on the northwestern edge of Ellesmere Island, on the Canadian territory of Nunavut, the Milne ice shelf is likely to have collapsed on July 30 or 31, according to ice analyst Adrienne White of the Canadian Ice Service. Satellite images show that about 43% of the plank broke off, forming pieces that were up to 260 feet thick.
“Whole cities are so big,” Copland told Reuters. “This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and is disintegrated, in principle.”
Unlike glaciers, which sit on top of land, ice planes float in the ocean. They are typically hundreds to thousands of years old and thicker than six. Before the Milne ice shelf broke apart, it was larger than DC.
Temperatures are rising faster in the Arctic
The Arctic heats up much faster than the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as polar amplification, and these hot temperatures cause ice to melt. Today, polar ice caps are melting six times faster than in the 1990s.
In Canada, there was a continuous ice scale over the northern coast of Ellesmere, but man-made warming has taken it apart, White said. By 2005, Milne was “really the last full ice rink,” she told the Associated Press.
While Milne scientists were less vulnerable to collapse because it is protected in the Milne Fiord, the plank has sustained cracks over the years.
