Going, Going, GONE: Two Arctic Ice Caps Have Disappeared

"All that’s left are some photographs and a lot of memories.”

ImaGeo iconImaGeo
By Tom Yulsman
Jul 31, 2020 12:12 AMJul 31, 2020 1:33 PM
Mark Serreze on one of the St. Patrick Bay Ice Caps
Mark Serreze, now director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, conducting research on one of Canada's St. Patrick Bay ice caps as a graduate student in 1982. He and a colleague have just confirmed that they've melted and completely disappeared. (Credit: Ray Bradley via NSIDC)

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Two little Arctic ice caps that Mark Serreze studied as a graduate student in the early 1980s might not have been as grand and dramatic as other features of our planet's cryosphere, but to him they nonetheless were quite special.

Were quite special — past tense — because Serreze, who now directs the National Snow and Ice Data Center, has confirmed that the two ice caps on the Hazen Plateau of Canada's Ellsmere Island have disappeared. They're the victims of human-caused warming that has occurred three times more rapidly in the Arctic than anywhere else.

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