ABSTRACT
The Arctic islands consist of Greenland, with Svalbard (Spitsbergen, Franz Josef and other islands nearby), Jan Mayen and Novaya Zemlya to the east, and the Canadian Archipelago to the west (Figure 10.1). All these islands support extensive and massive glaciers and icecaps. Together they make up about 12 per cent of the globe's ice cover, some two million square kilometres, 90 per cent of it in Greenland.
