Cool Geo-Pic: Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island

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Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island

Large images
July 22, 2008 (Aqua MODIS; 3.6 MB JPEG)
August 29, 2008 (Terra MODIS; 4.0 MB JPEG)

Quick "Cut & Paste" Highlights:

Prior to July 2008, only five ice shelves remained in the Canadian Arctic: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ward Hunt, and Markham. With an estimated age of 4,500 years, these ice shelves were the remnants of a once-massive “glacial fringe” that explorer Robert Peary described in his trek along the Ellesmere Island coast in 1907. In July 2008, these shelves began disintegrating rapidly. By late August, Ellesmere ice shelves had lost a total of 214 square kilometers (83 square miles). A research team led by Derek Mueller at Trent University, and Luke Copland at the University of Ottawa, documented the ice shelves’ retreats through satellite images and photos.

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Credits:

For more information, see the Earth Observatory feature Rapid Retreat: Ice Shelf Loss along Canada’s Ellesmere Coast.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team. Caption by Michon Scott.