Arctic sheds huge chunks of ice

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

MONTREAL (AFP) — Two masses of ice together measuring almost 20 square kilometers (seven square miles) have broken off an Arctic ice shelf, the biggest breakup of Arctic ice in three years, Canadian officials announced.

The chunks broke off from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on the coast of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, forming two floating islands of ice measuring four to five square kilometers (1.9 square miles) and 14 square kilometers (5.4 square miles), officials said.

"The first broke off sometime around July 22 and the second in the night of July 23 to 24," Luc Desjardins, a senior iceberg forecaster for the Canadian Ice Service, told AFP Tuesday, noting that beads of smaller slabs also detached from the ice shelf and are now adrift.

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