The Milne Ice Shelf, a fragment of the former

Ellesmere Ice Shelf The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, encompassing about of the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. The ice shelf was first documented by the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, in which Lieutenant ...

, is located in the

Qikiqtaaluk Region The Qikiqtaaluk Region, Qikiqtani Region (Inuktitut syllabics: ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ ) or the Baffin Region is the easternmost, northernmost, and southernmost administrative region of Nunavut, Canada. Qikiqtaaluk is the traditional Inuktitut nam ...

Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...

, Canada. It is the second largest

ice shelf An ice shelf is a large platform of glacial ice floating on the ocean, fed by one or multiple tributary glaciers. Ice shelves form along coastlines where the ice thickness is insufficient to displace the more dense surrounding ocean water. T ...

in the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

. Situated on the north-west coast of

Ellesmere Island Ellesmere Island (; ) is Canada's northernmost and List of Canadian islands by area, third largest island, and the List of islands by area, tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of , slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total ...

, it is about west of Alert, Nunavut. In 1986, the ice shelf had an area of about , with a central thickness of . It had been the last ice shelf in the

Canadian Arctic Northern Canada (), colloquially the North or the Territories, is the vast northernmost region of Canada, variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories a ...

to be fully intact until July 2020, when over 40 percent of the sheet collapsed within two days, a consequence of

global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

. An uninhabited research camp was lost when the shelf collapsed. It included instruments for measuring water flow through the ice shelf.

References

Ice shelves of Qikiqtaaluk Region {{QikiqtaalukNU-geo-stub