The Arctic Ocean has ice shelves as well. It is where Polar Bears used to look for seals for food. This is the newest collapse of an ice shelf and this time it was the LAST INTACT ICE SHELF in the Arctic Ocean along the Canadian coast.
The reason this occurred is that there was no sea ice to protect the ice shelf. The ice shelf was exposed to warmer ocean waters, hence, no sea ice and no protection for the ice shelf.
By Jenny McGrath
Over the weekend, (click here) the Canadian Arctic’s last intact ice shelf collapsed, turning into two ice islands. Scientists say warmer air temperatures and a lack of sea ice contributed to the breakup.
“These ice shelves are able to break up now because of the lack of pressure of sea ice against the sides of these ice shelves,” Dr. Adrienne White, an ice analyst at the Canadian Ice Service with Environment and Climate Change Canada, told Digital Trends. White was monitoring satellite images along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island and the west coast of Greenland over the weekend when she noticed the Milne Ice Shelf looked very different; it had a large fracture. Over the next few days, the shelf broke into two chunks, and now they’re what’s known as ice islands. One is about 21 square miles; the other is about nine square miles.
“The winds cause the ice pack to move away from the boundaries of the ice shelf, giving it room to actually break out, and for the ice islands to drift away from the ice shelf front,” she said. NASA has a graph showing how the amount of Arctic sea ice has declined since 1979. Over the long term, warming air temperatures and possibly warming ocean temperatures can cause the shelves to thin, leaving them more fragile....
