New satellite images from NASA have shown that the ice caps of St. Patrick's Bay in Nunavut, Canada have completely disappeared. Scientists predicted this three years ago.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), recent images from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflecting Radiometer (ASTER) aboard NASA's Terra satellite confirm that the ice caps located on the Hazen Plateau in northeast Ellesmere Island have disappeared.
Mark Serrez, director of NSIDC, first visited the ice caps in St. Patrick's Bay in 1982. “When I first visited these places, they [ice caps] seemed to be a permanent feature of the landscape. It's incredible to see them disappear in less than 40 years."
In 2017, Serrez and a team of scientists predicted that the ice caps would completely melt within five years. They came to this conclusion by comparing satellite data for July 2015 with aerial photographs taken in August 1959. The team then discovered that over the years, the area of the ice caps had shrunk to 5% of their previous area.
Scientists said 2015 was a particularly devastating year for the ice caps as they shrank markedly due to a particularly warm summer. In the images taken by NASA equipment on July 14, 2020, the ice caps are no longer visible anywhere.
“We have known for a long time that as climate change increases, the impact will be especially noticeable in the Arctic,” says Serrez. “But the death of those two little hats that I once knew so well made this change very personal. All that is left is a few photographs and many memories."
The melted places were half one of the groups of small ice caps on the Hazen Plateau that formed during the Little Ice Age several centuries ago. The other half of the group - the Murray and Simmons ice caps - is higher and in better condition. However, scientists from the NSIDC predict that their death will also be inevitable.
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