The Milne Ice Shelf

“Milne Ice Shelf: Satellites capture Arctic ice split”

The Planet Earth-observation company has just released new imagery of the broken Milne Ice Shelf in the Arctic. Located on the northern margin of Canada’s Ellesmere Island, the ice platform split on 30/31 July to form a free-floating bloc some 80 sq km (30 sq miles) in area. By 3 August, this berg, or “ice island”, had itself ruptured in two, with both segments then seen to drift out into the Arctic Ocean. Ice shelves are the floating fronts of glaciers that have flowed off the land into the sea. Ellesmere Island was once bounded by extensive shelves that had melded into a single structure.