![Alfred Ernest Ice Shelf 02](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Alfred_Ernest_Ice_Shelf_02.jpg)
The Alfred Ernest Ice Shelf is an ice shelf on the north-west part of
Ellesmere Island
Ellesmere Island ( iu, script=Latn, Umingmak Nuna, lit=land of muskoxen; french: île d'Ellesmere) is Canada's northernmost and List of Canadian islands by area, third largest island, and the List of islands by area, tenth largest in the world. ...
, Canada. This ice mass is one of four remaining
ice shelves
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 b ...
on the island.
This ice shelf lies between Alert Point and Cape Woods on the Wootton Peninsula. The Alfred Ernest Ice Shelf is regarded as a composite ice shelf that is composed of an inner unit of glacial origin and a trunk glacier originating from
sea ice
Sea ice arises as seawater freezes. Because ice is less dense than water, it floats on the ocean's surface (as does fresh water ice, which has an even lower density). Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth's surface and about 12% of the world's oce ...
.
Some time around 1955, a section of the ice shelf broke off. It is now called the ARLIS-II ice island.
Further reading
![Alfred Ernest Ice Shelf map 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Alfred_Ernest_Ice_Shelf_map_01.jpg)
* Glaciers of North America - Canada, Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World, U.S.G.S. Professional Paper 1386 – J – 1, pg J111 – J143
* Carsten Braun, Douglas R. Hardy, and Raymond S. Bradley, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 109, (2004). Surface mass balance of the Ward Hunt Ice
* Rise and Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada, Roy M. Koerner
* Earth Observatory, by: Nasa Were a Part of the Earths Enterprise
* Jiancheng Zheng, Akira Kudo, David A. Fisher, Erik W. Blake and M. Gerasimoff, The Holocene 8, 4 (1998) pg. 413 – 421, Solid electrical conductivity (ECM) from four, Agassiz ice cores, Ellesmere Island NWT, Canada: high-resolution signal and noise over the last millennium and low resolution over the Holocene
See also
*
Fletcher's Ice Island
Fletcher's Ice Island or T-3 was an iceberg discovered by U.S. Air Force Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher. Between 1952 and 1978 it was used as a staffed scientific drift station that included huts, a power plant, and a runway for wheeled aircraft.
References
Ice shelves of Qikiqtaaluk Region
{{QikiqtaalukNU-geo-stub