All articles tagged with #epishelf lake
Scientists confirm the Milne Fiord epishelf lake on Ellesmere Island disappeared after the Milne Ice Shelf collapsed in 2020, draining the freshwater layer atop saltwater and erasing a unique two-layer Arctic ecosystem that existed for about 4,000 years — a stark sign of rapid climate-driven change in the Arctic.
A new study chronicles the 2020 breakup of Nunavut’s Milne Ice Sheet that destroyed Canada’s last epishelf lake—an isolated freshwater layer perched above saltwater—draining it in months and wiping out a rare Arctic ecosystem, underscoring how rapidly climate warming is erasing unique lake–ocean systems.
A decade of data confirms Canada’s Milne Fiord epishelf lake—one of the Arctic’s few freshwater-on-seawater habitats—effectively disappeared after the 2020 Milne Ice Shelf breakup. By 2022 the lake’s freshwater layer had been replaced by brackish water, and ongoing monitoring shows no signs of recovery, indicating the ecosystem was lost and is not expected to return unless the ice dam reforms—a reversal unlikely under current climate trajectories.