Penny Ice Cap

Penny Ice Cap
The Penny Ice Cap
Type	Icecap
Location	Nunavut, Canada
Coordinates	67°15′N 66°00′W / 67.250°N 66.000°WCoordinates: 67°15′N 66°00′W / 67.250°N 66.000°W
Terminus	outflow glaciers

The Penny Ice Cap is a 6,000 km² (2,300 sq mi) ice cap in Auyuittuq National Park of Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. It forms a 2,000 m (6,562 ft) high barrier on the Cumberland Peninsula, an area of deep fiords and glaciated valleys. It is a remnant of the last ice age. During the mid-1990s, Canadian researchers studied the glacier's patterns of freezing and thawing over centuries by drilling ice core samples.^[1][2]

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.^[3][4]

The ice cap is named after Captain William Penny, a Whaling captain from Aberdeen in Scotland who pioneered over-wintering with native Inuit at Cumberland Sound in order to be able to start whaling (in the nineteenth century) much earlier in the season. He was also engaged by Lady Franklin to search for her husband John, lost with all souls in the search for the North West Passage.

See also

• List of glaciers

References

1. Nunatsiaq News: Penney Ice Cap shrinking like the rest?
2. NOAA Paleoclimatology: Penny Ice Cap Data
3. NASA: Penny Ice Cap in 1979 and 2000
4. C. Zdanowicz et al.: Summer melt rates on Penny Ice Cap, Baffin Island: Past and recent trends, and implications for regional climate