Arctic climate: Glaciers and Ice shields

Glaciers and Ice shields are ice masses on land. The two largest ice shelds are the Greenland ice shield in the Arctic and the Antarctic continent, where the Antarctic ice shield accounts for most of all ice on the globe. The ice shields are good climate indicators, since they react only very slowly to changes. They also make it possible to obtain information about the past climate by stored information in the deep layers that formed many thousand years ago.

Two glaciers on Svalbard: Tunabreen (top) and Kongsbreen (bottom)