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Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
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The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, located on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. It is 443 square kilometers in size, and has been in place for approximately 3,000 years.
The ice sheet began breaking up approximately 100 hundred years ago, but was believed to have stabilized by the early 1980s. However, in April 2000, satellite images revealed that a large crack in the ice began had begun to form, and in 2003, it was announced that the ice sheet had split completely in two, releasing a huge pool of fresh water from the largest epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere, located in Disraeli Fjord.
The icebergs released by the breakup now pose a potential danger to shipping and offshore development in the region. Loss of microbial ecosystems caused by the release of the freshwater may also have far-ranging ecological impacts.
The incident has been linked to global warming, but some critics claim that its breakup merely indicates the natural end of the last ice age.
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