Sun Glacier (; old
Greenlandic spelling: ''Iterdlagssûp Qíngua''), is a
glacier
A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...
in northwestern
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
.
Administratively it belongs to the
Avannaata
Avannaata (, ) is a municipality of Greenland created on 1 January 2018 from the bulk of the former Qaasuitsup municipality. It encompasses an area of 522,700 km2 and has 10,726 inhabitants.
Geography
In the south, Avannaata is flanked ...
municipality.
This glacier was named by
Robert Peary
Robert Edwin Peary Sr. (; May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was long credited as being ...
. It was the subject of paintings by
Frank Wilbert Stokes
Frank Wilbert Stokes, also known as Frank Stokes, Frank W. Stokes and F. W. Stokes
, Smithsonian American Art M ...
at the end of the 19th century. In a 1892 painting Stokes described the terminus of the glacier:
Geography
The Sun Glacier discharges from the
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 ...
at the head of the
MacCormick Fjord.
T. C. Chamberlin, ''Glacial Studies in Greenland.'' The Journal of Geology Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr. - May, 1897), pp. 229-240. Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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The glacier flows roughly from NNE to SSW.[The recent regimen of the ice cap margin in North Greenland](_blank)
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See also
*List of glaciers in Greenland
This is a list of glaciers in Greenland. Details on the size and flow of some of the major Greenlandic glaciers are listed by Eric Rignot and Pannir Kanagaratnam (2006)
Ice sheets and caps
*Greenland Ice Sheet
*Ad Astra Ice Cap (Greenland), ...
*Inglefield Fjord
Inglefield Gulf or Inglefield Fjord (; ) is a fjord in northwestern Greenland. To the west, the fjord opens into the Baffin Bay. Administratively it belongs to the Avannaata municipality.
Inglefield Gulf was named after English explorer Edward A ...
References
External links
Identifying Spatial Variability in Greenland's Outlet Glacier Response to Ocean Heat
Glaciers of Greenland
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