The Markham Ice Shelf was one of five major ice shelves in Canada, all on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. The ice shelf broke off from the coast in early August 2008, becoming adrift in the Arctic Ocean. The 4,500 year old ice shelf was then 19 square miles (49 km2) in size, nearly the size of Manhattan, and approximately ten stories tall. On September 3, 2008, CNN quoted Derek Mueller, of Trent University in Ontario, Canada as saying to the Associated Press:
"The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic... The Markham Ice Shelf had half the biomass for the entire Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf ecosystem as a habitat for cold tolerant microbial life; algae that sit on top of the ice shelf and photosynthesize like plants would. Now that it's disappeared, we're looking at ecosystems on the verge of extinction.As of September 6, it was floating in the Arctic Ocean.
Read more about Markham Ice Shelf: Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words markham, ice and/or shelf:
“The grip that swung the ax in Illinois
Was on the pen that set a people free.”
—Edwin Markham (1852–1940)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The boy seemed to have fallen
From shelf to shelf of someone’s rage.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)