Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University, one of the expedition’s leaders, said in an email from their Russian research ship that, for the first time, the team had discovered an extensive area of methane release so intense that “the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface.” The team believe that the accelerated release is connected to rising temperatures throughout the Arctic region.

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Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press this:

“The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic”

The Markham Ice Shelf is about 4,500 years old and this news comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. Plus earlier this year a 160-square mile chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated. Fact is, Arctic temperatures have risen faster than the global average in recent decades due to global warming:

“These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present,” Mueller said in an e-mailed statement from the research team sent late on Tuesday.

During the last century, when ice shelves would break off, thick sea ice would eventually reform in their place.

“Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer, and extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years.” said Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa. “We have now reached a threshold where the environment is too warm for these ice shelves to exist anymore,”

These ice shelves contain many unique ecosystems that have yet to be studied. This is an opportunity lost because of how long these shelves take to form. This is just another horrifying reminder of how the climate crisis is rapidly effecting both the Arctic and us.

Related Posts:

Arctic Breakup Growing Each Week
Giant Cracks Appearing in Arctic Ice
Arctic Ice in Battle for its Life

Image source: nick_russill on Flickr