What’s in the photo? A lake bisecting the snowy rim of an ancient glacier<\/p>\n
Which satellite took the photo? NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite<\/p>\n
When was it taken? Sept. 4, 2010<\/p>\n
This striking satellite photo shows the point where a tiny lake bisects the snowy rim of a massive ancient glacier on a Canadian island in the Arctic Circle<\/a>.<\/p>\n The small body of water, dubbed Gee Lake, is around 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) across at its widest point. It is located along the edge of the southeast limb of the Barnes Ice Cap<\/a> \u2014 a roughly 2,300-square-mile (6,000 square kilometers), “bowling-pin-shaped” glacier situated at the center of Baffin Island in Canada’s Nunavut territory.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In this image, captured in early September 2010, both the lake and the ice cap are still snow-free, except for the ice cap’s edge, due to warmer summer temperatures. As a result, we can see the dark gray of the glacier, which is caused by the buildup of dust between layers of ice “spanning time periods that dwarf a human life,” according to NASA’s Earth Observatory<\/a>. (In the winter, the glacier, lake and surrounding landscape are blanketed with snow.)<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n The exposed ice, which is up to 1,600 feet (500 meters) thick, is marked with striations that look like the “growth lines on a clamshell” running east to west, Earth Observatory representatives wrote.<\/p>\n These grooves are ridges cut by meltwater streams running off the glacier, Ted Scambos<\/a>, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the Earth Observatory. And while they give the impression that the ice is undulating, the surface of the glacier is surprisingly flat and smooth, he added.<\/p>\n \n The Barnes Ice Cap is often referred to as a bowling pin due to its shape when viewed from above. Gee Lake (circled) is one of several bodies of water that surround the glacier’s edge. (Image credit: Copernicus)<\/p>\n Ice core samples collected from the glacier reveal that parts of the Barnes Ice Cap date back around 20,000 years, making it Canada’s oldest known ice, according to a 2008 study<\/a>. It is also the last remaining fragment of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered most of Canada and the northern U.S. as far back as 100,000 years ago and helped to carve out the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n By around 20,000 years ago, as the last ice age began to thaw<\/a>, most of the Laurentide Ice Sheet had melted away. But what was left slowly migrated north, toward what is now Baffin Island, where it eventually disappeared into the sea (aside from the Barnes Ice Cap). A 2009 study<\/a> revealed that most of the melting ice passed through the Kangiqtualuk Uqquqti Fjord (previously known as the Sam Ford Fjord), around 70 miles (110 km) northeast of Gee Lake.<\/p>\n Although most of the Laurentide Ice Sheet is long gone, we can still see its impacts today. Recent research has shown that its meltwater has significantly altered ocean currents<\/a>, while the geological “rebound” caused by the vanished weight that once pressed down on North America may be causing some major U.S. cities to sink<\/a> and also affecting parts of Greenland<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n The Laurentide Ice Sheet covered the top half of North America between 100,000 and 20,000 years ago. The Barnes Ice Cap is all that is left of this colossal structure. (Image credit: Dalton et al. 2022 via Wikimedia)<\/p>\n Like most other glaciers in the Arctic<\/a> and Antarctica<\/a>, the Barnes Ice Cap is shrinking as a result of rising temperatures from human-caused climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although its current rate of ice loss is minimal \u2014 just a few meters of retreat per year \u2014 this will increase sharply as temperatures rise further. A 2017 study<\/a> predicts that most of the glacier will “likely disappear in the next 300\u2009years.”<\/p>\n \n <\/a><\/p>\n A 2021 astronaut photo shows a triple valley system in Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park where a massive climate-resilient glacier, a pristine turquoise lake and a murky green “river” come together at a single point.<\/p>\n![\"W](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/272noWQX3xfYF6paLgCCgD.jpg\")
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\nGlacier, lake and river ‘touch’ <\/p>\n
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