@cnnweather: A shrinking ice cap in Arctic Canada tells a striking story of how humans may have halted the planet's next ice age by burning fossil fuels, according to new research. Around 20,000 years ago, the once vast Laurentide Ice Sheet sprawled from the Arctic Circle as far south as Illinois and was up to two miles thick in parts. All that remains of it now is the Delaware-sized Barnes Ice Cap on Baffin Island in Canada's Nunavut territory. Roughly 2,000 years ago, this ice cap started to slowly and steadily re-expand. Its growth marked the start of a new period of glaciation, commonly called an ice age, according to the new study published in the journal Science. But around 1960, as human-driven climate change pushed up summer temperatures, the ice cap abruptly began to shrink. #climatechange #arctic

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Thursday 29 October 2026 16:04:04 GMT