Penny Ice Cap

Penny Ice Cap is a vast remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island, Nunavut, covering about 6,000 square kilometers and rising roughly 2,000 meters on the Cumberland Peninsula amid deep fjords and glaciated valleys. In the mid-1990s, Canadian researchers drilled ice cores there to trace centuries of freezing and thawing, using the ice as a record of past climate. In recent decades, the ice cap has thinned and its valley glaciers have retreated as eastern Arctic summer and winter air temperatures have risen. It is named for Captain William Penny, an Aberdeen whaling captain later involved in the search for Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition.

Nunavut · Canada