Ellesmere Ice Shelf
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Ellesmere Ice Shelf
The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, encompassing about of the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. The ice shelf was first documented by the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, in which Lieutenant Pelham Aldrich's party went from Cape Sheridan to Cape Alert. The continuous mass of the Ellesmere Ice Shelf had been in place for at least 3,000 years. During the twentieth century, the Ellesmere Ice Shelf broke up into six separate shelves. From west to east, these were the Serson Ice Shelf, Petersen Ice Shelf, Milne Ice Shelf, Ayles Ice Shelf, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, and Markham Ice Shelf. The smaller pieces continued to disintegrate. In April 2000, satellite images revealed that a large crack in the Ward Hunt shelf had begun to form, and in 2003 it was announced that the ice sheet had split completely in two in 2002, releasing a huge pool of freshwater from the largest epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere, located in Disraeli Fjo ...
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Ice Shelf
An ice shelf is a large floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are only found in Antarctica, Greenland, Northern Canada, and the Russian Arctic. The boundary between the floating ice shelf and the anchor ice (resting on bedrock) that feeds it is the grounding line. The thickness of ice shelves can range from about to . In contrast, sea ice is formed on water, is much thinner (typically less than ), and forms throughout the Arctic Ocean. It is also found in the Southern Ocean around the continent of Antarctica. The movement of ice shelves is principally driven by gravity-induced pressure from the grounded ice. That flow continually moves ice from the grounding line to the seaward front of the shelf. In steady state, about half of Antarctica's ice shelf mass is lost to basal melt and half is lost to calving, but the relative importance of each process varies significantly between ic ...
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Ellesmere Island
Ellesmere Island ( iu, script=Latn, Umingmak Nuna, lit=land of muskoxen; french: île d'Ellesmere) is Canada's northernmost and third largest island, and the tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of , slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total length of the island is . Lying within the Arctic Archipelago, Ellesmere Island is considered part of the Queen Elizabeth Islands. Cape Columbia at 83°06′ is the northernmost point of land in Canada and one of the northernmost points of land on the planet (the northernmost point of land on Earth is the nearby Kaffeklubben Island of Greenland). The Arctic Cordillera mountain system covers much of Ellesmere Island, making it the most mountainous in the Arctic Archipelago. More than one-fifth of the island is protected as Quttinirpaaq National Park. In 2021, the population of Ellesmere Island was recorded at 144. There are three settlements: Alert, Eureka, and Grise Fiord. Ellesmere Island is administered a ...
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Nunavut
Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the '' Nunavut Act'' and the '' Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act'', which provided this territory to the Inuit for independent government. The boundaries had been drawn in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canada's political map in half a century since the province of Newfoundland was admitted in 1949. Nunavut comprises a major portion of Northern Canada and most of the Arctic Archipelago. Its vast territory makes it the fifth-largest country subdivision in the world, as well as North America's second-largest (after Greenland). The capital Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay), on Baffin Island in the east, was chosen by a capital plebiscite in 1995. Other major communities include the regional centres of Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay. Nunavut also includes Ellesme ...
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British Arctic Expedition
The British Arctic Expedition of 1875–1876, led by Sir George Strong Nares, was sent by the British Admiralty to attempt to reach the North Pole via Smith Sound. Although the expedition failed to reach the North Pole, the coasts of Greenland and Ellesmere Island were extensively explored and large amounts of scientific data were collected. History Two ships, and —captained by Henry Frederick Stephenson—sailed from Portsmouth on 29 May 1875. On this expedition, Nares became the first explorer to take his ships all the way north through the channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island —now named Nares Strait in his honour— to the Lincoln Sea. Up to this time, it had been a popular theory that this route would lead to the supposed Open Polar Sea, an ice-free region surrounding the pole, but Nares found only a wasteland of ice. A sledging party under Commander Albert Hastings Markham set a new record, Farthest North of 83° 20′ 26″ N. Meanwhile, ...
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Pelham Aldrich
Admiral Pelham Aldrich, CVO (8 December 1844 – 12 November 1930) was a Royal Navy officer and explorer, who became Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Docks. Biography He was born in Mildenhall, Suffolk, the son of Dr. Pelham Aldrich and Elizabeth Frances Aldrich, and married Edith Caroline Issacson in 1875. He entered the Royal Navy as a Naval Cadet in June 1859 and was promoted to sub-lieutenant on 17 September 1864 and lieutenant on 11 September 1866. He served as a lieutenant on the corvette , then from 18 December 1869 on the broadside ironclad and from 15 November 1872 on the as first lieutnant. Whilst on board the ''Challenger'', he took part in the 4-year-long ''Challenger'' expedition of 1872–76 – a scientific expedition that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. In 1875, he transferred to the sloop to take part in the British Arctic Expedition, which was sent by the British Admiralty to attempt to reach the North Pole via Smith Sou ...
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Cape Sheridan
Cape Sheridan is on the northeastern coast of Ellesmere Island, Canada situated on the Lincoln Sea in the Arctic Ocean, on the mouth of Sheridan River, west bank. It is one of the closest points of land to the geographic North Pole, approx to the north, Cape Columbia is however some closer to the Pole. Cape Sheridan was the wintering site of Robert Peary Robert Edwin Peary Sr. (; May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for, in Apri ...'s final quest to reach the north pole in 1908/1909; the Cape Sheridan Depot being located there. Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world, is located to the west. Headlands of Qikiqtaaluk Region Ellesmere Island {{QikiqtaalukNU-geo-stub ...
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CFS Alert
Canadian Forces Station Alert (french: Station des Forces canadiennes Alert), often shortened to CFS Alert (), is a signals intelligence intercept facility of the Canadian Armed Forces at Alert, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. Located on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island, Alert is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world. It takes its name from HMS ''Alert'', which wintered east of the present station off what is now Cape Sheridan, Nunavut in 1875–1876. The entire population of Baffin, Unorganized, part of the Baffin Region, the Statistics Canada name for Qikiqtaaluk, resides here. As of the 2016 Canadian census the population was 62, an increase of 1,140 per cent over the 2011 census. History Alert Wireless Station Alert, then in Canada's Northwest Territories, was first settled April 9, 1950, when the first staff for the Joint Arctic Weather Station (JAWS) arrived and began construction. Since the beginning of the JAWS project, ...
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Serson Ice Shelf
The Serson Ice Shelf is a major ice shelf on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot .... It measured approximately until 60 percent of it broke away in two large sections during summer 2008. References Ellesmere Island Ice shelves of Qikiqtaaluk Region {{QikiqtaalukNU-geo-stub ...
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Petersen Ice Shelf
Petersen is a common Danish patronymic surname, meaning ''"son of Peter"''. There are other spellings. Petersen may refer to: People In arts and entertainment * Adolf Dahm-Petersen, Norwegian voice specialist * Anja Petersen, German operatic soprano and university lecturer * Anker Eli Petersen, Faroese writer and artist * Ann Petersen, Belgian actress * Chris Petersen (born 1963), American child actor * Devon Petersen (born 1986), South African darts player * Elmer Petersen, American artist * Gustaf Munch-Petersen, Danish writer and painter * Joel Petersen, bass guitarist * John Hahn-Petersen, Danish actor * Josef Petersen, Danish novelist * Patrick Petersen, American actor * Paul Petersen, American movie actor, singer, novelist, and activist * Robert E. Petersen, publisher, auto museum founder * Robert Storm Petersen, Danish cartoonist, writer, animator, illustrator, painter and humorist * Sandy Petersen, American game designer * Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, German musician * ...
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Milne Ice Shelf
The Milne Ice Shelf, a fragment of the former Ellesmere Ice Shelf, is located in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is the second largest ice shelf in the Arctic Ocean. Situated on the north-west coast of Ellesmere Island, it is about west of Alert, Nunavut. In 1986, the ice shelf had an area of about , with a central thickness of . It had been the last ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic to be fully intact until July 2020, when over 40 percent of the sheet collapsed within two days, a consequence of global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E .... An uninhabited research camp was lost when the shelf collapsed. It included instruments for measuring water flow through the ice shelf. References Ice shelves of Qikiqtaaluk Region {{Qikiqtaaluk ...
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Ayles Ice Shelf
The Ayles Ice Shelf was one of six major ice shelves in Canada, all on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. The ice shelf broke off from the coast on August 13, 2005, forming a giant ice island thick and measuring around in size (approximately in area or in volume). The oldest ice in the ice shelf is believed to be over 3,000 years old. The ice shelf was at (), approximately south of the North Pole. The Ayles Ice Shelf, like the nearby Mount Ayles, was named for the Arctic explorer, Adam Ayles, who served under George Nares as the Petty Officer of HMS ''Alert'' in the British Arctic Expedition. A 1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that , a volume of , of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974. Canada lost 94% of its overall ice shelf area between 1906 and 2015. Ayles Ice Island On August 13, 2005, the entire shelf broke clear from the coast of Ellesmere, forming a new ice island. It is believed to be the largest shelf ...
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Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, located near Ward Hunt Island, on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. During the 20th century the Ellesmere Ice Shelf broke up into six separate shelves, the largest being Ward Hunt. Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is currently about in size, and has been in place for approximately 4,000 years as part of a continuous ice shelf that encompassed the northern coast of Ellesmere Island until the beginning of the twentieth century. In 2005 one of the other shelves, the Ayles Ice Shelf, calved completely. The Ellesmere ice shelf was documented by the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, in which Lieutenant Pelham Aldrich's party went from Cape Sheridan (82.47°N, 61.50°W) west to Cape Alert (82.27°N, 85.55°W), including the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. Reports from Robert Peary's expedition in 1906 described a “broad glacial fringe” covering much of the coast of northwestern Ellesmere Island. The Ward Hunt ice ...
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