Due to global warming a huge ice shef from Canada's High Arctic broke away from Ellesmere Island. The 4,500 year old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and is now freely drifting into the ocean. The 19 square mile shelf is one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic.

Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario explained that the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along Ellesmere Island added up to 83 square miles this summer. In July other substantial pieces of ice had calved from Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest of the Ellesmere shelves. Other four shelves are going through the same changes.

These five shelves are actually what’s left of a much larger ice cover that was once bounded to Ellesmere Island and covered about 3,500 square miles. 90% of the ice was lost thought out the past 100 years.

Mueller said the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along Ellesmere Island this summer was at least three times the area of New York's Manhattan Island.

These ice shelves are irreplaceable because they took so long to form thus their ecosystems are unique.

Further loss of Arctic ice will make the whole Earth to heat up because warmer radiation will only be absorbed by darker seawater and snow-free land without the help of ice in the Arctic that reflects energy from the Sun straight back out into space. Temperatures in the Arctic have risen much faster than the global average in recent decades.