Global Warming

The Arctic's Most Stable, Solid Patch of Ice Is Melting

A chunk of hard ice north of Greenland has disappeared.

It should be there; it's been there for longer than any other ice in the Arctic. It's never gone missing before in all the years that humans have been tracking it. Indeed, according to The Guardian, scientists used to refer to it as "the last ice area," thinking it would hold out at the edge of Greenland even as the warming planet melted all the ice around it. But now, according to satellite images, a big piece of that Greenland coastal ice suddenly vanished or was reduced to floating bits and slush.

February 2018 was a bizarrely warm winter month in the Arctic, with the region at one point climbing above freezing for 24 hours during a time when local waters usually pack on a thick crust of ice that can last throughout the year. In the result sea ice is collapsing in the summer.

A NASA satellite image shows where the ice has pulled away from Greenland's north coast, a phenomenon that's never been recorded before.

Northwest Passage a Reality

Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company, is about to launch the first ever container ship on an Arctic route along Russia’s north coast, as melting sea ice promises to offer a possible future alternative to the Suez Canal.

The Venta Maersk, a new ice-class 42,000 ton vessel which can carry 3,600 containers, will leave Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast later this week.

The ship, carrying a cargo of frozen fish, will then follow the Northern Sea Route up through the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, before travelling along Russia’s north coast and eventually to St Petersburg by the end of September.

The route has seen growing traffic during summer months already, with cargos of oil and gas regularly making the journey.

Arctic sea ice hit a record low for January this year, and an “extreme event” was declared in March as the Bering Sea’s ice levels reached the lowest level in recorded history as temperatures soared 30 degrees above average.