Queen Elizabeth Islands the four ice caps that the federal government's NRCan's Climate Change Geoscience Program Earth Sciences Sector (ESS), monitors onsite in the Canadian High Arctic, three are in the Queen Elizabeth Islands: Devon, Meighen and Melville. In a memo to Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) in Canada's High Arctic indicates that shrinking of ice caps started in the late 1980s, and has accelerated rapidly since 2005," says an October 2013 memo to NRCan's deputy minister, who reports to federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. The increased melt rate was confirmed by University of California, Irvine in 2017. Computer analysis of a glacier
Queen Elizabeth 2 January 2008, with a celebratory fireworks display; "Queen Elizabeth 2" and "Queen Victoria" had made a tandem crossing of the Atlantic for the meet. This marked the first time three "Cunard Queens" had been present in the same location. (Cunard stated this would be the last time these three particular ships would meet, due to the impending retirement of "Queen Elizabeth 2". However, due to a change in "Queen Elizabeth 2"s schedule, the three ships met again in Southampton on 22 April 2008.) "QE2" shared the harbour at Zeebrugge with "Queen Victoria" on 19 July 2008, where the two Cunarders