A chuck of ice measuring 7 square miles broke off a Canadian ice shelf in the arctic yesterday. The sheet broke away from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada’s far north.
Derek Mueller, a polar scientist and research fellow at Trent University explained that a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002. This is the biggest chunk of ice to break away from one of Canada’s six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005.
“Ice shelves don’t just break up. There’s no karate chop,” he said. “This is the result of a gradual weakening over time as a result of warming temperatures.”
“We’re in a different climate now…. “It’s not conducive to regrowing them. It’s a one-way process.”
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Inconvenient Truth of the Day
Huge Ice Sheet Breaks Loose in Arctic
Ice sheet breaks loose off Canada
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Tagged as:Al Gore • arctic • Ayles • Canada • climate change • effects of climate change • effects of global warming • Ellesmere Island • environmental issues • evidence of global warming • global climate change • global warming causes • global warming effects • global warming solutions • ice sheets • ice sheets metling • ice shelf • inconvenient truth • Inconvenient Truth of the Day • ITOTD • Trent University • Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
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