by 1 Cylivers
Snapshot
The page may have changed since the time the snapshot was taken. [go to current page].
Some 16km long and 5km wide (10x3 miles), Ayles Ice Island broke away from the Canadian Arctic coast in 2005, but has only recently been identified.
Researchers have now landed on the giant berg with a BBC team and planted a tracking beacon on its surface.
This will allow the island's progress to be monitored as currents push it around the Arctic Ocean.
For 3,000 years, this colossal block of ice was securely fixed to the coast as part of the Ayles Ice Shelf - but now it is drifting free. 
Tracking the island Its current location is about 600km (400 miles) from the North Pole, in what is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth.
We approached the island in a small plane. From the air, the vast expanse of white stood out as unusually smooth compared with the much rougher sea ice that forms and thaws with the changing seasons.
The island's surface was judged safe enough to land on - our plane was fitted with skis - and after a bumpy touchdown we ground to a halt, the first expedition of its kind.
Soon the scientists were at work - time was limited with the risk of the weather changing.
First, Dr Derek Mueller of the University of Alaska Fairbanks dug down through the surface layer of snow to reach the mass of the ice below. 
More detailsThen he and Dr Luke Copland, of the University of Ottawa, carried out a series of measurements using a ground-penetrating radar.
They found that the average of thickness of the ice was 42-45m (138-148ft) - the equivalent of the height of a 10-storey building.
This was slightly thicker than expected.
Comments
- SciTech, Jul 09, 2007 at 09:29 AM PDT said:
Hmm...interesting. It is obvious that we need to address the global warming problem with a great sense of urgency.
