Ayles Ice Shelf

Before: Ellesmere Island on July 12, 2002.
After: A NASA satellite image taken August 13, 2005, shows the collapse. The newly formed ice island forms only a small part of this picture, being the fragment very close to shore at the centre of the image. The island is ringed in the picture shown in this CBC article.

The Ayles Ice Shelf was one of six major ice shelves in Canada, all on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. The ice shelf broke off from the coast on August 13, 2005, forming a giant ice island 37 m (121 ft) thick and measuring around 14 by 5 km (8.7 by 3.1 mi) in size (approximately 55 km2 (21 sq mi) in area or 2.6 km3 (0.62 cu mi) in volume). The oldest ice in the ice shelf is believed to be over 3,000 years old. The ice shelf was at (82°52′N 80°30′W / 82.867°N 80.500°W / 82.867; -80.500), approximately 800 km (500 mi) south of the North Pole.

The Ayles Ice Shelf, like the nearby Mount Ayles, was named for the Arctic explorer, Adam Ayles, who served under George Nares as the Petty Officer of HMS Alert in the British Arctic Expedition.[1] A 1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that 48 km2 (19 sq mi), a volume of 3.3 km3 (0.79 cu mi), of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974.[2] Canada lost 94% of its overall ice shelf area between 1906 and 2015.[3]

  1. ^ "British immigrant made mark in Arctic world". Wairarapa Times-Age. November 9, 2002. Archived from the original on October 7, 2007.
  2. ^ Jeffries, Martin O. (March 1986). "Ice Island Calvings and Ice Shelf Changes, Milne Ice Shelf and Ayles Ice Shelf, Ellesmere Island, N.W.T." (PDF). Arctic. 39 (1). Arctic Institute of North America. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 28, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2006..
  3. ^ Mueller, Derek; Copland, Luke; Jeffries, Martin O. (2017). "Changes in Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf Extent Since 1906". In Copland, Luke; Mueller, Derek (eds.). Arctic Ice Shelves and Ice Islands. Springer Polar Sciences. Springer Netherlands. pp. 109–148. doi:10.1007/978-94-024-1101-0_5. ISBN 978-94-024-1101-0.