Auyuittuq: ‘The Land that Never Melts’ is Melting

The title of this entry comes from a quote in a CBC News article yesterday describing the on-going flooding problems in Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island.

Parks Canada officials say they have never seen anything like this before in Auyuittuq. “Auyuittuq means ‘land that never melts,’ but of course now it’s melting,” Pauline Scott, a spokeswoman for Parks Canada’s Nunavut field unit, told CBC News on Tuesday.

Auyuittuq is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and it has meant a lot to me since my travels there. Individual weather anomalies are of course impossible to tie to overall climate change, but it’s hard not to see this as part of a larger, more tragic trend.

The picture accompanying the article shows the Weasel River undermining the moraine field that holds back Crater Lake, which I’ve pointed out in the following map:

Google Maps satellite image of Crater Lake, Akshayuk Pass in Auyuittuq National Park, Nunavut, Canada

The referenced article also connected the flooding here with that which occurred this June in Pangnirtung which I had mentioned recently.