The high temperatures have caused this glacier, the last intact from the canadian Arctic, and has lost more than 40% of its area in two days.
“It was the largest glacier still intact and it disintegrates, just” blows Luke Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa, the british news agency Reuters. The ice shelf Milne was broken, announced last Monday the ECCC (Environment and climate Change, Canada). A piece of ice larger than Manhattan, New York city, has stalled. It measures 79 km2. The glacier has lost 40% of its area in two days at the end of the month of July.
The icy platform of Milne is situated on the edge of Ellesmere island, “one of the largest in the world,” reports Le Figaro. According to the canadian institute, the temperatures, the wind and the water “free near the plateau” are the ones responsible for this “break”, symbolic of the climate change.
animation satellite published by the canadian ice service shows the magnitude of the event.
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The collapse of the ice on Ellesmere island has also led to the loss of the last lake, Epishelf known in the northern hemisphere, a geographical feature in which a mass of fresh water is dammed by the ice and floating above the ocean water.
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This year, temperature records are indeed registered in the Arctic, such as Svalbard, archipelago of norway, which has registered at the end of July temperatures beyond 20 degrees. According to scientists, the Arctic is warming two times faster than the planet as a whole.
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The summer of 2020 in the region is marked by episodes almost scorching in the Russian part of the Arctic : temperatures 5°C above normal since January in Siberia and a peak at 38°C in early July in the arctic circle.
