Unusually thin, rotten ice, north of Alaska

The ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean is now the smallest conglomeration of frozen jigsaw puzzle pieces that people have seen in the era of satellites. That record is short, only going back to 1979, but the ice loss has been outracing some conservative computer models. According to an Alaska scientist just back from the ice pack, northern ice is not what she had seen before.

“We were seeing unusually thin, rotten ice, all the way to 79 degrees north,” Hutchings said. “That’s where you would expect some of the heaviest ice, and we were having no trouble at all getting through.”

“The more I look at the situation this year, the more I realize how unusual it is,” she said.

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