Factors Contributing to Recent Arctic Ice Shelf Losses

Abstract

A review of historical literature and remote sensing imagery indicates that the ice shelves of northern Ellesmere Island have undergone losses during the 1930s/1940s to 1960s, and particularly since the start of the twenty-first century. These losses have occurred due to a variety of different mechanisms, some of which have resulted in long-term reductions in ice shelf thickness and stability (e.g., warming air temperatures, warming ocean temperatures, negative surface and basal mass balance, reductions in glacier inputs), while others have been more important in defining the exact time at which a pre-weakened ice shelf has undergone calving (e.g., presence of open water at ice shelf terminus, loss of adjacent multiyear landfast sea ice, reductions in nearby epishelf lake and fiord ice cover). While no single mechanism can be isolated, it is clear that they have all contributed to the marked recent losses of Arctic ice shelves, and that the outlook for the future survival of these features is poor.