Massive ice shelf breaks off in Canadian Arctic

New Scientist Environment blog: A huge 55-square-kilometre ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate. These are the latest signs of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday. They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totalling 120 square km had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60%.

"The changes ... were massive and disturbing," says Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec. Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked to global warming. "These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic," says Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario.

Brent Glacier (Osborn Range), Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada, flowing down to Tanquary Fiord; opposite side: Mount Kennedy Icecap. Shot by Ansgar Walk, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License