Climate

It is not feasible to describe a singular climate for Auyuittuq National Park at any given time. In spite of the limited areal extent of the park in comparison with Baffin Island, weather conditions within its boundaries can vary tremendously from time to time and from place to place. The complex nature of the climate of the Cumberland Peninsula is largely related to certain geographical characteristics.

The landscape is mountainous, and processes of glacierization have left a terrain which is in the forefront of the most rugged surfaces of the world. Extending from the sea coast on the northern boundary of the park, the land climbs steeply upward through the near-vertical slopes of fiord valleys to an ice-covered realm peaking above 2000 metres above sea level. The classical climatic controls (latitude, altitude, distance from the sea, topography and storm tracks) individually play very strong roles to define a most complex assemblage of climates varying enormously in a spatial sense, as well as with season.

Offshore, open water is common in the mid-winter, while no significant ablation takes place from the higher dome of the Penny Ice Cap in the summers of most years. Winds moving in from the sea, or streaming downslope from the ice fields are channeled and accelerated by the deeply incised fiord valleys, giving local scale howling gales while shelter and calm conditions are obtained only a few hundred metres away. The mountains rebuff and redirect or fragment deep storm systems passing over the area. Thus cloudiness, humidity and precipitation are quite contrasting across the park area, as are wind, temperature, visibility and other climatic criteria.