Ward Hunt Ice Shelf

[3] Reports from Robert Peary's expedition in 1906 described a “broad glacial fringe” covering much of the coast of northwestern Ellesmere Island.

[4] The Ward Hunt ice sheet began breaking up approximately 100 years ago, but was believed to have stabilized by the early 1980s.

However, in April 2000, satellite images revealed that a large crack in the ice 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 fresh water from the largest epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere, located in Disraeli Fjord.

[8] The breakup of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is tied to steady and dramatic increases in the average temperature of the region over the past centuries, correlated with long term global warming resulting from the ongoing warming since the last ice age ended at the start of the Holocene period.

[9][10] Al Gore mentions the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in his 2007 documentary An Inconvenient Truth.