The Devon Ice Cap is an

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 By definition, ice caps are not constrained by topogra ...

on eastern

Devon Island Devon Island (, ) is an island in Canada and the largest desert island, uninhabited island (no permanent residents) in the world. It is located in Baffin Bay, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is one of the largest members of the Arctic Ar ...

Nunavut Nunavut 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'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...

, Canada, covering an area of over . The highest point on Devon Island is found at the summit of the ice cap, with an elevation of . The ice cap has a maximum thickness of , and has been steadily shrinking since 1985. The first ascent of the Devon Ice Cap was by Alfred Herbert Joy and his Inuit companions in 1926.

Geology

The Devon Ice Cap and the Agassiz Ice Cap on the neighboring

Ellesmere Island Ellesmere Island (; ) is Canada's northernmost and List of Canadian islands by area, third largest island, and the List of islands by area, tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of , slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total ...

are two of the largest ice caps in the

Arctic Cordillera The Arctic Cordillera is a terrestrial ecozone in northern Canada characterized by a vast, deeply dissected chain of mountain ranges extending along the northeastern flank of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from Ellesmere Island to the northe ...

in the Canadian Arctic, and consist of a substantial fraction of ice not locked away in the

Antarctic The Antarctic (, ; commonly ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the South Pole, lying within the Antarctic Circle. It is antipodes, diametrically opposite of the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antar ...

and

Greenland ice sheet The Greenland ice sheet is an ice sheet which forms the second largest body of ice in the world. It is an average of thick and over thick at its maximum. It is almost long in a north–south direction, with a maximum width of at a latitude ...

s. As such, should the entire Devon Ice Cap melt due to global warming, the ice will contribute approximately 1 centimeter to global

sea level rise The sea level has been rising from the end of the last ice age, which was around 20,000 years ago. Between 1901 and 2018, the average sea level rose by , with an increase of per year since the 1970s. This was faster than the sea level had e ...

. The Devon Ice Cap has a dome-like structure and a maximum elevation of 1921 m above sea level at its summit, and the maximum ice thickness is 880 m. There are two distinct regions in the Devon Ice Cap: a ice cap and a ice-covered region in the west that is geologically inactive. Beneath the ice, two hypersaline subglacial lakes have been identified via RES in bedrock troughs. Subglacial valleys have also been found, and such structures are thought to control the outflow of ice.

References

External links

"Devon Ice Cap" on ''Mountain-forecast.com''
Ice caps of Canada Bodies of ice of Qikiqtaaluk Region Arctic Cordillera Devon Island {{canada-glacier-stub

Geology

See also

References

External links