Chunk of ice shelf adrift in Arctic Ocean

A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic. An Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario said that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean. Warwick Vincent, director of Laval University's Centre said the region was experiencing "extremely rapid climate change consistent with what all the predictions say about global climate change". He said: "It was a terrible thing to see, keeping in mind that these are features that have been around for what we think is more then 3000 years." Scientists said that two large sections of ice detached from the Serson Ice Shelf, shrinking that ice feature by 47 square miles, or 60 per cent, and that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has also continued to break up, losing an additional eight square miles. Scientists reported last month that seven square miles of the 170-square-mile and 130-feet-thick Ward Hunt shelf had broken off. This comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa said: "When we've lost these ice shelves, we've lost those really kind of unique, extreme, microbial environments that can't be replaced and once they've gone they're basically gone forever."

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ITN | September 4, 2008

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