Warming threatens Arctic glaciers

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2007

MONTREAL (AFP) — Warming in Canada's far north is melting glaciers that threaten to split into massive chunks and float away, a Canadian researcher told AFP Friday, after tagging an iceberg as big as Manhattan.

Geologist Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, and his colleague Derek Mueller of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, visited Ayles Ice Island this week to install beacons to follow its movements through the Arctic Ocean.

"On Monday, we landed on the ice island and (installed) a satellite tracking beacon, so we can track where the ice island (goes), and a temperature censor, which every hour will record the temperature," Copland told AFP.

The 16-by-five-kilometer (10-by-three-mile) slab of ice had split from Canada's Ellesmere Island close to...