Last Ice Area

Portion of the Last Ice Area - the North Water polynya (NOW) situated between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. Anomalous ice formation were recorded on the Smith Sound ice in 2007 (c) and 2009 (d).

The Last Ice Area is broadly the large interior polar region of the Arctic Circle covering an area between the northern edge of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and is the most northerly coastal zone of the world.[1] Being in a permafrost landscape, it is the oldest and thickest ice sheet in the Arctic and is expected to persist longest as a sea ice.[2] Towards the northern side, it consists of the Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area, which is the largest protected area in Canada and among the largest protected areas in the world.[3] It is one of the major centres of environmental concerns that is bound to have global impact. The Arctic Council's 2017 report Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost. Summary for Policy-makers predicted that current rate of climate change will cause the complete disappearance of the ice within a century.[4][5]

  1. ^ Vincent, Warwick F.; Mueller, Derek (2020). "Witnessing ice habitat collapse in the Arctic". Science. 370 (6520): 1031–1032. Bibcode:2020Sci...370.1031V. doi:10.1126/science.abe4491. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 33243873. S2CID 227171547.
  2. ^ Newton, Robert; Pfirman, Stephanie; Tremblay, L. Bruno; DeRepentigny, Patricia (2021). "Defining the "Ice Shed" of the Arctic Ocean's Last Ice Area and Its Future Evolution". Earth's Future. 9 (9): e2021EF001988. Bibcode:2021EaFut...901988N. doi:10.1029/2021EF001988. ISSN 2328-4277. S2CID 239150777.
  3. ^ Government of Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (2019-09-18). "Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area (MPA)". www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca. Retrieved 2021-12-05.
  4. ^ "Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost. Summary for Policy-makers". Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP). 2017-04-25. Retrieved 2021-12-05.
  5. ^ WWF (2017-04-25). "Changed Arctic, changed world". arcticwwf.org. Retrieved 2021-12-05.