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<h1 class="article-title" id="articleTitle">'Entire cities are that
size': Canada's last fully intact Arctic ice shelf collapses</h1>
<p class="article-subtitle">The Milne Ice Shelf at the fringe of
Ellesmere Island lost more than 40 per cent of its area in just
two days at the end of July The Milne Ice Shelf is at the fringe
of Ellesmere Island</p>
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<div class="visually-hidden">Author of the article:</div>
<img alt="Reuters" aria-labelledby="wire-company-name"
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<div class="wire-published-by__company" id="wire-company-name">Reuters</div>
<div class="wire-published-by__authors">Moira Warburton</div>
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<div class="published-date">
<div class="visually-hidden">Publishing date:</div>
<span class="published-date__since">Aug 07, 2020</span> • <span
class="updated-date__since"
data-last-update="2020-08-07T20:41:30+00:00">Last Updated 3
days ago</span> • <span class="published-date__word-count">3
minute read</span></div>
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<figure class="featured-image"><span class="featured-image__ratio"><img
alt="" class="featured-image__image lazyloaded"
src="https://smartcdn.prod.postmedia.digital/nationalpost/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ice.jpg?quality=100&strip=all&w=564"
width="567" height="425"></span><figcaption
class="featured-image__caption image-caption"><span
class="caption">Eureka Sound on Ellesmere Island in the
Canadian Arctic is seen in a NASA Operation IceBridge survey
picture taken March 25, 2014.</span> <span class="credit">REUTERS/NASA/Michael
Studinger/Handout/File Photo</span></figcaption></figure>
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<h2 class="visually-hidden">Article content</h2>
<p>The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic
has collapsed, losing more than 40 per cent of its area in
just two days at the end of July, researchers said on
Thursday.</p>
<p>The Milne Ice Shelf is at the fringe of Ellesmere Island,
in the sparsely populated northern Canadian territory of
Nunavut.</p>
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“Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds and
open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of
the recipe for ice shelf break up,” the Canadian Ice
Service said on Twitter when it announced the loss
on Sunday.</div>
<div class="ds_cpp ds_cpp_width"
data-dvp_reel_position="top"
data-dvp_title_trim="90" data-dvp_desc_trim="40"
data-dvp_zindex_base="1" style="position: relative;
clear: both; min-height: 300px; max-height: none;
z-index: 1; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; width: 100%;
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data-dvp_dockspec="br/400/225"
data-dvp_docktrigger="oov"
data-dvp_closescope="pageview"
data-dvp_closedelay="15">“Entire cities are that
size. These are big pieces of ice,” said Luke
Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa
who was part of the research team studying the Milne
Ice Shelf.</div>
</div>
</section>
</div>
</section>
</div>
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<h2 class="visually-hidden">Article content continued</h2>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true"
data-width="550">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Satellite animation, from July 30
to August 4, shows the collapse of the last fully
intact <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/iceshelf?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#iceshelf</a>
in <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Canada?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Canada</a>.
The Milne Ice Shelf, located on <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/EllesmereIsland?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EllesmereIsland</a>
in <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Nunavut?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Nunavut</a>,
has now reduced in area by ~43%. <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MilneIceIsland?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MilneIceIsland</a>
<a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/seaice?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#seaice</a>
<a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Arctic?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Arctic</a>
<a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/earthrightnow?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#earthrightnow</a>
<a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/glacier?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#glacier</a>
<a href="https://t.co/jjs1gawoxA">pic.twitter.com/jjs1gawoxA</a></p>
— ECCC Canadian Ice Service (@ECCC_CIS) <a
href="https://twitter.com/ECCC_CIS/status/1290740808170307584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August
4, 2020</a></blockquote>
</div>
<p>The shelf’s area shrank by about 80 square kilometers. By
comparison, the island of Manhattan in New York covers
roughly 60 square kilometers.</p>
<p>“This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and
it’s disintegrated, basically,” Copland said.</p>
<p>The Arctic has been warming at twice the global rate for
the last 30 years, due to a process known as Arctic
amplification. But this year, temperatures in the polar
region have been intense. The polar sea ice hit its lowest
extent for July in 40 years. Record heat and wildfires
have scorched Siberian Russia.</p>
<p>Summer in the Canadian Arctic this year in particular has
been 5 degrees Celsius above the 30-year average, Copland
said.</p>
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<p>That has threatened smaller ice caps, which can melt
quickly because they do not have the bulk that larger
glaciers have to stay cold. As a glacier disappears, more
bedrock is exposed, which then heats up and accelerates
the melting process.</p>
<p>“The very small ones, we’re losing them dramatically,” he
said, citing researchers’ reviews of satellite imagery.
“You feel like you’re on a sinking island chasing these
features, and these are large features. It’s not as if
it’s a little tiny patch of ice you find in your garden.”</p>
<p>The ice shelf collapse on Ellesmere Island also meant the
loss of the northern hemisphere’s last known epishelf
lake, a geographic feature in which a body of freshwater
is dammed by the ice shelf and floats atop ocean water.</p>
</section>
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<p>A research camp, including instruments for measuring
water flow through the ice shelf, was lost when the shelf
collapsed. “It is lucky we were not on the ice shelf when
this happened,” said researcher Derek Mueller of Carleton
University in Ottawa, in an Aug. 2 blog post.</p>
<p>Ellesmere also lost its two St. Patrick Bay ice caps this
summer.</p>
<p>“We saw them going, like someone with terminal cancer. It
was only a matter of time,” said Mark Serreze, director of
the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder,
Colorado.</p>
<p>Serreze and other NSIDC scientists had published a 2017
study predicting the ice caps were likely to disappear
within five years. The ice caps were believed to have
formed several centuries ago.</p>
<p>The vanishing was confirmed last month, when NASA
satellite shots of the region revealed a complete lack of
snow and ice, said Serreze, who studied the caps as a
graduate student on his first trip to the Arctic years
ago. At the time, he said, the caps had seemed like
immovable parts of the geography.</p>
<p>“When I was there in the 1980s I knew every square inch
of those ice caps,” he said. “You have the memories. It’s
like your first girlfriend.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, another two ice caps on Ellesmere — called
Murray and Simmons — are also diminishing and are likely
to disappear within 10 years, Serreze said.</p>
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