Cracks in Canada's Arctic ice shelves even worse than feared, says scientist

CBCNews.ca: Polar ice researchers who teamed up with Canadian Rangers on a patrol around Ellesmere Island this month say they've found that cracks in ice shelves are worse than they originally thought. The High Arctic ice shelves could all be fragmented in a matter of years, said Derek Mueller, a polar scientist and research fellow at Trent University, who returned this week from the two-week joint sovereignty patrol and research expedition known as Operation Nunalivut.

Mueller said he and the other scientists on the trip found that the permanent ice shelves are breaking off or cracking at an alarming rate, due in part to climate change and global warming. The scientists found cracks up to 12 metres wide in some ice shelves….

Tanquary Fiord (view to the South); Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. Photo by Ansgar Walk, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.