By Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit

Bernie draws our attention to an article in the Globe and Mail on another break-off of the Ellesmere Island ice shelf: The Globe and Mail has an excellent map of the “collapse” of this ice sheet. Apparently its collapse has been proceeding for about 100 years.

Update- The break is said to be unprecedented since as long ago as 2005:” Scientists say the break, the largest on record since 2005 but still small when compared with others “

This topic is in the news from time to time - there was another similar story in a couple of years ago. At the time, I looked into the matter and wrote several posts on the topic of Ellesmere Island ice shelves, which people interested in this topic may wish to re-visit. Ellesmere Island Ice Shelves, Ellesmere Island Driftwood, Ayles Ice Shelf, and Ice Island T-3.

Bradley and England 2008 , “The Younger Dryas and the sea of ancient ice”, is a highly readable and interesting discussion of Ica Age climate, which, inter alia, contains an account of late 19th century descriptions of the Ellesmere Island ice shelves, which Bradley and England 2008 propose as an analogue for the much larger “paleocrystic ice” that they propose for the LGM. Their Figure 1 is an 1878 watercolor of an Ellesemere Island ice shelf about which they say: “We believe this painting provides an eye-witness view of some of the paleocrystic floes that formed during the Little Ice Age, but were breaking up by the end of the 19th century.” Sere more of Steve’s blog and comments here.

Also Anthony Watts did an arctic update “There is Still a Lot of Ice Up There” here.

See large image here

As NSIDC reported ”Arctic sea ice extent on July 16 stood at 8.91 million square kilometers (3.44 square miles). While extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average of 9.91 square kilometers (3.83 million square miles), it was 1.05 million square kilometers (0.41 million square miles) above the value for July 16, 2007” As the University of Illinois Cryosphere showed it up to date

See full size imge here.