In 2017, Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who has studied the St. Patrick Bay ice caps since the 1980s, estimated that the caps would melt completely unless greenhouse emissions were reduced. Serreze’s predictions have come true.
According to satellite images taken by NASA on July 14th, 2020, the ice caps had completely vanished. It was an unfortunate contrast from images taken in 2015, where the ice caps appeared to have a comparatively stronger presence.
However, even in 2015, the St. Patrick Bay ice caps, located on the Hazen Plateau of northeastern Ellesmere Island, had undergone serious damage. They had already shrunk considerably and were only five percent of their estimated size from sixty years ago.
“When I first visited those ice caps, they seemed like such a permanent fixture of the landscape. To watch them die in less than 40 years just blows me away,” he said.
Serreze is also known for his work on the decline of the Arctic sea. In 2008, he made claims on how the Arctic is under a “death spiral” and could disappear in a few decades.
Rapidly melting ice-caps are visual of the climate crisis and its impact on the planet.
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