The Arctic’s ‘last ice area’ is showing signs of weakness

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By Rachel Berkowitz, Science. 

Excerpt: Plugged with the world’s oldest and thickest sea ice, the fjords of the Queen Elizabeth Islands (QEI), in the northernmost Canadian Arctic, have long been impenetrable to icebreaker ships. But even here, in a place where climate models predict ice will persist the longest, global warming is taking its toll. Last summer, when the Canadian Coast Guard ship Amundsen conducted the first comprehensive oceanographic research mission through the QEI archipelago, the ice “was much easier to go through than we expected,” says Amundsen Capt. Pascal Pellerin. Floes once several meters thick were broken and soft.... 

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