The Penny Ice Cap, formerly Penny Icecap, is a

ice cap In glaciology, an ice cap is a mass of ice that covers less than of land area (usually covering a highland area). Larger ice masses covering more than are termed ice sheets. Description Ice caps are not constrained by topographical features ...

in Auyuittuq National Park of

Baffin Island Baffin Island (formerly Baffin Land), in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the largest island in Canada and the fifth-largest island in the world. Its area is , slightly larger than Spain; its population was 13,039 as of the 2021 Canadia ...

Nunavut Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...

, Canada. It forms a high barrier on the Cumberland Peninsula, an area of deep

fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...

s and glaciated valleys. It is a remnant of the last

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...

. During the mid-1990s, Canadian researchers studied the glacier's patterns of freezing and thawing over centuries by drilling

ice core An ice core is a core sample that is typically removed from an ice sheet or a high mountain glacier. Since the ice forms from the incremental buildup of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper ones, and an ice core contains ic ...

samples. The ice cap has been thinning and its valley glaciers have been retreating in recent decades related to rising summer and winter air temperatures across the eastern

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...

.C. Zdanowicz et al.: Summer melt rates on Penny Ice Cap, Baffin Island: Past and recent trends, and implications for regional climate
/ref> The ice cap is named after Captain William Penny, a

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...

captain from Aberdeen in Scotland who pioneered over-wintering with native

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

at Cumberland Sound in order to be able to start whaling (in the 19th century) much earlier in the season. He was also engaged by Lady Franklin to search for John Franklin, lost with all his crew in the search for the

Northwest Passage The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arct ...

References

Bodies of ice of Baffin Island Arctic Cordillera Ice caps of Canada {{canada-glacier-stub

See also

References