Ice caps are simply small versions of ice sheets, measuring in at a maximum area of 50,000 square kilometers (about 19,000 square miles). It's their small and thin stature that makes ice caps more prone to melt in a warming Arctic. Charles Webb of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., explains the importance of monitoring ice caps in the Canadian Arctic
A few flights within NASA's Operation IceBridge — an airborne mission to monitor Earth's polar ice — are adding to the long-term record of ice cap changes. Such a record can provide insight into ice cap dynamics as well as provide an early-warning indicator of the impacts of climate change.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0