Arctic Archipelago
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago: a vast, mostly uninhabited high-Arctic land of over 36,000 islands.
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The Arctic Archipelago is a group of 36,563 islands at the northern extremity of North America, covering about 1,424,500 km².[1] It comprises much of Northern Canada, predominantly Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.[1] By the year 2100, computer modeling indicates that ice loss from this region will cause global sea levels to rise by 3.5 cm.[1][2]
Geography and history
This group of islands numbers 36,563, with 94 of them considered major (each exceeding 130 km² in size), and together they span 1,400,000 km².[3] When Nunavut was created in 1999, that district was abolished.[4] Canada considers the entire Northwest Passage to be part of its internal waters, a position not shared by most other maritime nations, which regard it as an international strait.[4] Hans Island, located east of Ellesmere Island, is now jointly administered by Canada and Denmark, concluding a dispute that lasted for many decades.[5][6]
What the cited sources add
A 2013 Science News report states that glaciers of Canada’s Arctic islands are irreversibly melting.[2] The same report notes that by 2100, the islands’ glaciers may shed 12.4 trillion tons of ice, or 18 percent of their current volume.[2] That melting would make the archipelago the world’s third-largest source of sea level rise from vanishing ice, after Greenland and Antarctica.[2] According to a 2022 National Post article, Hans Island has been in Canada’s orbit since 1880, when Britain’s Arctic possessions were transferred to Ottawa.[6]
The same article explains that the island’s name comes from Hans Hendrik, a Greenland Inuk who served as a guide for Arctic expeditions.[6] Denmark’s claim to Hans Island was bolstered in 1933 when the Permanent Court of International Justice gave Denmark full sovereignty over Greenland.[6]
References
- Wikipedia, "Arctic Archipelago" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Marsh, James H., ed. 1988. "Arctic Archipelago" The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Hurtig Publishers.; Thinning of the Arctic Sea-Ice Cover; Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast; Wayman, "Canada's ice shrinking rapidly", Science News, March 11, 2013 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wayman, "Canada's ice shrinking rapidly", Science News, March 11, 2013. facts only, no text reused. sciencenews.org
- Wikipedia, "Arctic Archipelago" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Arctic Archipelago", www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Arctic Archipelago" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Northwest Passage gets political name change", Edmonton Journal (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Arctic Archipelago" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Levin, "Canada and Denmark Fight Over Island With Whisky and Schnapps", The New York Times, 7 November 2016; Bender, "2 countries have been fighting over an uninhabited island by leaving each other bottles of alcohol for over 3 decades", Business Insider; Hopper, "Canada to get new land border with Denmark as decades-long Hans Island dispute ends", National Post, 13 June 2022 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Hopper, "Canada to get new land border with Denmark as decades-long Hans Island dispute ends", National Post, 13 June 2022. facts only, no text reused. nationalpost.com
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Arctic Archipelago (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Arctic Archipelago (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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