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
MS Queen Elizabeth maiden voyage to the Canary Islands the following day. The Queen was also the sponsor of the now-retired "Queen Elizabeth 2" in 1967 and Cunard's current flagship, "Queen Mary 2", in 2004. The first master of "Queen Elizabeth" was Captain Christopher Wells. On Monday 4 October 2010 "Queen Elizabeth" was formally handed over to Cunard. She sailed on her maiden voyage from Southampton on Tuesday 12 October 2010, following a naming ceremony with the monarch on Monday 11 October 2010. At the end of October 2011 "Queen Elizabeth" and her fleet mates changed their registries to Hamilton, Bermuda, in order