Penny Ice Cap, Ice cap in Auyuittuq National Park, Canada

Penny Ice Cap is a 6,000 km2 (2,300 sq mi) ice cap in Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island, Nunavut. It forms a 2,000 m (6,562 ft) high barrier on the Cumberland Peninsula, an area of deep fjords and glaciated valleys. The French Wikipedia gives its thickness as 300 m and its summit at about 2,100 m.

The Penny Ice Cap is a remnant of the Laurentide ice sheet. In the mid-1990s Canadian researchers drilled ice cores on the cap to study centuries of freezing and thawing. In recent decades the cap has thinned and its valley glaciers have retreated as summer and winter air temperatures rose across the eastern Arctic.

The ice cap is named after Captain William Penny of Aberdeen, who wintered with Inuit at Cumberland Sound in the 19th century so his whaling crews could start hunting earlier than competitors. Lady Jane Franklin later engaged him to search for John Franklin's lost expedition.

Access requires special preparation and equipment for extreme Arctic conditions. The best season for visiting is the summer months when temperatures are milder, although crevasses and rough terrain remain hazardous even then.

Ice core data shows that melting rates have reached unprecedented speeds in recent decades. These frozen cores are like history books that reveal climate changes in this polar region over several thousand years.