Thin sea ice linked to giant fractures off Alaska and Canada

Fractures in the sea ice off the coast of Alaska and Canada can be seen in this satellite image captured on March 8, 2013. (Image: Environment Canada) Beginning in late February, Arctic sea ice in the Beaufort Sea began rupturing, resulting in gigantic fractures that stretched across some 1,000 miles of territory— from Barrow, Alaska, to Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. Those fractures are clearly visible in the satellite image above. You can see the coast of Alaska outlined on the lefthand side of the image. The Canadian coast is toward the bottom and the right. In its regular sea ice update on March 7, the National Snow and Ice Data center took note of the event, ascribing it to a storm that passed over the North Pole on February 8. It also noted that while this was the proximate cause, there was a more fundamental factor at work: