After the collapse: checking for vital signs on a fading Arctic icescape
At the extreme northern tip of the world, a team of scientists battles time and weather to ponder the aftereffects of a giant ice shelf collapse at Milne Fiord
Two years ago, a Manhattan-sized piece of the Milne Ice Shelf was lost. This past July, a small team of researchers touched down on one of the planet's northernmost points to study what led to the collapse.
Video: Dustin Patar
This article is more than 1 year old
Two years ago, the world lost a Manhattan-sized piece of the Milne Ice Shelf, one of the last, thickest — and at the time, most intact — ice shelves of its kind in the Canadian Arctic. In July, for the first time since that calving event, a small team of researchers touched down on one of the northernmost points on the planet to study what led to that collapse. They were also seeking answers about what it means for the entire ecosystem.
Although an ever-growing array of space-based technology allows scientists to observe and collect data on the Arctic remotely — including the satellite cameras that first alerted scientists with the Canadian Ice Service that 79 square kilometres of once land-fast ice was adrift in the Arctic Ocean — there’s no substitute for actually being there.
That’s why scientists like Derek Mueller, a glaciologist with the Water and Ice Research Laboratory at Carleton University in Ottawa, have made an annual trip to the Milne Fiord for the past 14 years.
Getting to this remote location north of Resolute, Nvt., is no small feat. As the crow flies, Milne Fiord is roughly as far from Toronto as Halifax is from Victoria. Natural Resources Canada’s Polar Continental Shelf Program supports this Far North research by providing field equipment, accommodations in Resolute and transportation to the fiord. But like so many things these last two years, the pandemic made these trips impossible.
The anticipation was almost palpable on a cloudy July day when Mueller and a team of international scientists finally boarded a De Havilland Twin Otter aircraft loaded with camping gear, scientific tools and minds full of post-calving event questions.
They hoped the instruments they placed under the ice three years ago would provide answers — assuming they were intact and could be found. Other investigations would require a medley of hands-on work orchestrated around the availability of a helicopter, needed to effectively navigate the icy expanse of the fiord, which extends more than 80 kilometres from the tip of the shelf to the top of the glacier.
But when conducting fieldwork at the top of the world, even the best-laid plans can change at a moment’s notice.
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Two years ago, a Manhattan-sized piece of the Milne Ice Shelf was lost. This past July, a small team of researchers touched down on one of the planet's northernmost points to study what led to the collapse.
Video: Dustin Patar
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