The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, encompassing about 9,100 square kilometres (3,500 square miles) of the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada.
[1] During the twentieth century, the Ellesmere Ice Shelf broke up into six separate shelves.
In April 2000, satellite images revealed that a large crack in the Ward Hunt shelf had begun to form, and in 2003 it was announced that the ice sheet had split completely in two in 2002, releasing a huge pool of freshwater from the largest epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere, located in Disraeli Fjord.
[4] In April 2008, scientists discovered that the shelf fractured into dozens of deep, multi-faceted cracks.
It suffered a 40% disintegration in July 2020 with the loss of a research camp, including instruments for measuring water flow.