With the setting of the sun and the onset of polar darkness, the Arctic Ocean would normally be crusted with sea ice along the Siberian coast by now. But this year, the water is still open.
I have watched the region’s transformations since the 1980s as an Arctic climate scientist and, since 2008, as director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. I can tell you, this is not normal. There is so much more heat in the ocean now than there used to be that the pattern of autumn ice growth has been completely disrupted.
To understand what is happening to the sea ice this year and why it is a problem, let us look back at the summer and into the Arctic Ocean itself.
Siberia’s summer
The summer melt season in the Arctic started early. A Siberian heat wave in June pushed air temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (About 38 degrees Celsius) at Verkhoyansk, Russia, for the first…
