It’s interesting as to why some stories get traction in the mainstream media and why some don’t. In online science discussions, the fate of this years summer sea ice has been the focus of a significant debate of expert prediction skills. However, none of these efforts made it on to the Today program. Instead, a rather casual article in the UK based Independent that showed the latest thickness data and quoted Mark Serreze as saying that the “area around the North Pole had 50/50 odds of being completely ice free this summer”, has taken off across the media.
The key issue is that since last year’s dramatic summer ice anomaly, the winter ice that formed in that newly opened water is relatively thin (around 1 meter), compared to multi-year ice (3 meters or so). This new ice formed quite close to the Pole, and with the prevailing winds and currents (which push ice from Siberia towards Greenland) is now over the Pole itself. Given that only 30% of first year ice survives the summer, the chances that there will be significant open water at the pole itself is high.
The actuality will depend on the winds and the vagaries of Arctic weather - but it certainly bears watching. Ironically, you will be able to see what happens only if it doesn’t happen (from these web cams near the North Pole station).
This is very different from the notorious story in the New York Times back in August 2000. In that case, the report was of the presence of some open water at the pole - which as the correction stated, is not that uncommon as ice floes and leads interact. What is being discussed here is large expanses of almost completely ice-free water. That would indeed be unprecedented since we’ve started tracking it.
