For most of the year, the Barnes Ice Cap in the Canadian Arctic lies quiet under a blanket of snow. By summer, that snow melts back, and the ice cap transforms in texture, its bare ice dotted with turquoise ponds and its surface threaded with meltwater channels. In summer 2026, this seasonal awakening arrived fast and early.
一年中的大部分时间，加拿大北极地区的巴恩斯冰盖都安静地躺在积雪之下。到了夏天，雪又融化了，冰盖的质地也发生了变化，裸露的冰上点缀着绿松石色的池塘，表面布满了融水通道。 2026 年夏天，这个季节性的觉醒来得又快又早。
Located in the center of Baffin Island, the ice cap is a remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which once covered much of northern North America. Today, the bowling-pin-shaped ice cap spans around 5,700 square kilometers (2,200 square miles), with ice up to about 730 meters (2,400 feet) thick. Like most of the glacial ice across the Canadian Arctic , the Barnes Ice Cap is thinning and retreating .
冰盖位于巴芬岛的中心，是劳伦泰德冰盖的残余物，劳伦泰德冰盖曾经覆盖了北美北部的大部分地区。如今，保龄球瓶形状的冰盖面积约 5,700 平方公里（2,200 平方英里），冰厚约 730 米（2,400 英尺）。与加拿大北极地区的大部分冰川一样，巴恩斯冰盖正在变薄和后退。
The ice cap entered the 2026 melt season with an already-thin snowpack, and within a few weeks it had gone from snow-covered to mostly bare. By mid-July, its snow cover was effectively gone—“the earliest it has been this bare,” said glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College, who has monitored the ice cap using images from Landsat satellites and, when possible, field observations.
进入 2026 年冰盖融化季节时，积雪已经很薄，几周之内，冰盖就从冰雪覆盖变成了大部分裸露。到了 7 月中旬，冰盖实际上已经消失了——“这是最早出现的，”尼科尔斯学院的冰川学家毛里·佩尔托（Mauri Pelto）说，他利用陆地卫星图像以及在可能的情况下进行实地观测来监测冰盖。
Once snow cover melts away and bare ice is exposed, melting speeds up in the Arctic summer sunshine. Bare ice is darker than snow and absorbs more solar energy, so as the reflective snow cover disappears, the ice cap warms and melts faster. At the same time, a network of meltwater channels, many of which persist from year to year, becomes increasingly visible.
一旦积雪融化，裸露的冰暴露出来，在北极夏季的阳光下融化速度就会加快。裸露的冰比雪颜色更深，吸收更多的太阳能，因此当反射性雪盖消失时，冰盖变暖并融化得更快。与此同时，融水通道网络变得越来越明显，其中许多通道年复一年地存在。
The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 acquired these images of the ice cap on July 12, 2026. Ponded blue meltwater dots the ice in places, and a vast network of meltwater channels spans the ice cap’s surface from its middle to its edges. Faint, curving gray lines indicate the many millennia of snow and ice accumulation that built the ice cap.
Landsat 9 上的 OLI（操作陆地成像仪）于 2026 年 7 月 12 日获取了冰盖的这些图像。蓝色的融水在冰盖的某些地方点缀着，巨大的融水通道网络横跨冰盖的表面，从中间到边缘。微弱的、弯曲的灰色线表明了数千年的冰雪积累，形成了冰盖。
Barnes Ice Cap has been snow-free before, including in 2019, 2020, and 2024, Pelto said, but this year it happened sooner. The early snow loss and return of meltwater channels in 2026 means that meltwater runoff is starting earlier too, with implications for the ice cap’s mass balance . Water that might once have pooled and then percolated into any remaining snowpack and firn and refrozen there—adding mass back to the ice cap—instead gets whisked away. That surface drainage becomes more efficient as the season progresses and channels widen and connect.
佩尔托说，巴恩斯冰帽以前就没有过雪，包括 2019 年、2020 年和 2024 年，但今年发生得更早。 2026 年融水通道的早期积雪流失和回归意味着融水径流也更早开始，这对冰盖的质量平衡产生影响。水可能曾经聚集起来，然后渗入任何剩余的积雪和雪中，并在那里重新冻结——增加冰盖的质量——而是被迅速带走。随着季节的推移以及渠道的拓宽和连接，地表排水变得更加有效。
Research indicates the ice cap thinned roughly 1 meter (3 feet) per year from 2000 to 2020, and over the past 40 years its margin has retreated about 4 meters (13 feet) per year on average. However, retreat rates vary widely across the ice cap. An especially fast-retreating area on the ice cap’s central-southern side pulled back by more than 400 meters (1,300 feet) total, or roughly 10 meters (33 feet) per year. This retreat is visible in the wide view above as a lighter brown band of freshly exposed earth and rock along that side of the ice cap.
研究表明，从 2000 年到 2020 年，冰盖每年变薄约 1 米（3 英尺），而在过去 40 年里，其边缘平均每年缩减约 4 米（13 英尺）。然而，整个冰盖的退缩率差异很大。冰盖中南侧的一个特别快速后退的区域总共后退超过 400 米（1,300 英尺），即每年约 10 米（33 英尺）。在上面的广阔视野中可以看到，沿着冰盖的那一侧，有一条由新暴露的泥土和岩石组成的浅棕色带子，可以看到这个退缩处。
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey . Story by Kathryn Hansen, with science review by Christopher Shuman, UMBC (retired).
NASA 地球观测站图像由 Lauren Dauphin 使用美国地质调查局的陆地卫星数据拍摄。故事由凯瑟琳·汉森撰写，科学评论由 UMBC 的克里斯托弗·舒曼（已退休）撰写。