The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was the largest
ice shelf in the Arctic, encompassing about of the north coast of
Ellesmere Island
Ellesmere Island (; ) 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. It comprises an area of , slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total ...
,
Nunavut
Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...
, 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 Fjord. In April 2008, scientists discovered that the shelf fractured into dozens of deep, multi-faceted cracks.
On August 13, 2005, The
Ayles Ice Shelf, which was located approximately south of the
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...
, broke away from the coast forming the giant
Ayles Ice Island thick and measuring around in size with an area of approximately or in volume.
The
Milne Ice Shelf was the second largest segment of the former Ellesmere Ice Shelf. It suffered a 40% disintegration in July 2020 with the loss of a research camp, including instruments for measuring water flow.
Notes
Ice shelves of Qikiqtaaluk Region
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