The Penny Ice Cap, formerly Penny Icecap,[1] is a 6,000 km2 (2,300 sq mi) ice cap in Auyuittuq National Park of Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada.

It forms a 2,000 m (6,562 ft) high barrier on the Cumberland Peninsula, an area of deep fjords and glaciated valleys.

During the mid-1990s, Canadian researchers studied the glacier's patterns of freezing and thawing over centuries by drilling ice core samples.

[2][3] The ice cap has been thinning and its valley glaciers have been retreating in recent decades related to rising summer and winter air temperatures across the eastern Arctic.

[4][5] The ice cap is named after Captain William Penny, a whaling captain from Aberdeen in Scotland who pioneered over-wintering with native Inuit at Cumberland Sound in order to be able to start whaling (in the 19th century) much earlier in the season.