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Canada’s last fully intact arctic ice shelf collapses

by Moira Warburton, The Huffington Post


Highlights

  • The Milne Ice Shelf, located on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, has collapsed, resulting in the loss of over 40% of the glaciers total area
  • The area loss is more than the island of Manhattan 
  • Arctic amplification, high air temperatures, offshore winds, and open water in front of the ice shelf are to blame 
  • Luke Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa, says that summer in the Canadian arctic has been 5 degrees Celcius warmer over the 30-year average
  • The collapse of the shelf resulted in the loss of the northern hemisphere’s last known epishelf lake and took down a research camp that was empty before the collapse
  • Two other ice caps on Ellesmere Island are also diminishing and are likely to disappear within 10 years

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Read More: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/canada-last-arctic-ice-shelf_n_5f2c9d69c5b64d7a55f0d6ec?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004