Rapid wastage of the Hazen Plateau ice caps, northeastern Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

Serreze, Mark C.; Raup, Bruce; Braun, Carsten; Hardy, Douglas R.; Bradley, Raymond S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-169-2017

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-169-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-169-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

Research article

|

25 Jan 2017

Research article |

| 25 Jan 2017

Rapid wastage of the Hazen Plateau ice caps, northeastern Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

Mark C. Serreze, Bruce Raup, Carsten Braun, Douglas R. Hardy, and Raymond S. Bradley

Data sets

Radiosonde data for station Alert Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/igra/

ASTER data NASA Land Processes DAAC https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/

Short summary

The Hazen Plateau of Ellesmere Island, Nunavat, Canada, is unglaciated with the exception of four small ice caps, the two St. Patrick Bay ice caps and the Murray and Simmons ice caps. Satellite data reveal that as of July 2016, the St. Patrick Bay ice caps have shrunk to 5 % of the area they covered in 1959 and will disappear in a few years. The Murray and Simmons ice caps have been reduced to 39 % and 25 %, respectively, of their former areas and may persist for another one or two decades.