Arctic Ice Breaks Up in Beaufort Sea

[XemaSab]

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[joshcryer]

1. Madness.

[abelenkpe]

2. K&R nt

[pscot]

3. I die a little

whenever I see something like this.

[truebrit71]

4. Shit...

...this summer is going to get very interesting..

[DreamGypsy]

5. A dream ... and a ...

...nightmare.

Stan Rogers' Northwest Passage. No video of Stan performing, but this 'cover' is good:

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Do we have any equivalent sequence from previous years?

The typical state of Beaufort Sea ice in February and March isn't something I'm familiar with.

On edit:
Some posts from the Arctic Sea Ice blog which do give some idea of previous years:

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/the-cracks-of-dawn.html : "According to A-Team: "If taken as a simplistic predictor of the 2013 melt season, we are 51 days ahead of last season." "

To recapitulate: It is normal for the ice to crack and for leads to occur. However, this is very extensive cracking and there are some very big leads, and all of it seems to come earlier than expected. Given last year's melting mayhem and the low amount of multi-year ice, it makes one wonder whether this early cracking will have any effect in the melting season to come.

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/crack-is-bad-for-you-and-sea-ice.html

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/arctic-freezing-season-ends-with-a-loud-crack.html : 8 images for the whole Arctic, from Jan 1st. onwards, at 10 day intervals (ie up to March 12th, I think), for the last 4 years.

[truebrit71]

7. 51 days?

:eek:

[NickB79]

8. Oh, how bad could 51 extra days of summer be for ice?

Just slap some sunscreen on it and we'll all be fine, right?