Ellesmere Ice Shelf facts for kids

The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was once the biggest ice shelf in the Arctic. It covered a huge area of about 9,000 square kilometers (3,500 square miles) along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada. Explorers from the British Arctic Expedition first wrote about it in 1875–76. This massive ice shelf had been in place for at least 3,000 years!

What is an Ice Shelf?

An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice. It forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are usually found in very cold places like the Arctic and Antarctic. They are connected to land but float on the water.

A Giant Breaks Apart

During the 1900s, the Ellesmere Ice Shelf started to break up. It split into six smaller, separate ice shelves. From west to east, these were the Serson Ice Shelf, Petersen Ice Shelf, Milne Ice Shelf, Ayles Ice Shelf, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, and Markham Ice Shelf. Over time, these smaller pieces continued to break apart even more.

Famous Break-ups

Some of these break-ups were quite dramatic and caught the attention of scientists around the world.

The Ward Hunt Shelf

In April 2000, satellite pictures showed a big crack forming in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. By 2002, it had completely split in two. This event released a huge amount of fresh water from the largest epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere. An epishelf lake is a lake of fresh water trapped between an ice shelf and the land. This particular lake was located in Disraeli Fjord. In April 2008, scientists found that the Ward Hunt shelf had broken into many deep, new cracks.

The Ayles Ice Island

On August 13, 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf broke away from the coast. This created a giant floating piece of ice called the Ayles Ice Island. It was located about 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of the North Pole. This ice island was about 37 meters (120 feet) thick. It measured around 14 kilometers (9 miles) long and 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide. Its total area was about 66 square kilometers (25 square miles), and its volume was about 2.6 cubic kilometers (0.62 cubic miles).

The Milne Ice Shelf

The Milne Ice Shelf was the second largest part of what used to be the Ellesmere Ice Shelf. In July 2020, it lost 40% of its size. This break-up also destroyed a research camp on the ice, along with instruments used to measure water flow.