Last August, scientists aboard an icebreaker that had been drifting with the ice across the Arctic Ocean in a yearlong research expedition decided to take a detour to the North Pole. They needed to get there quickly, so they used satellite data to find a route where the concentration of sea ice was low enough for the icebreaker, the Polarstern, to push through easily. They found it in an unlikely place, the Wandel Sea, just north of Greenland. “This area used to be one that was chock-full of this old, thick sea ice,” said Melinda Webster, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who was on board for this part of the Mosaic expedition. “It’s not what we encountered when we went through there.” Instead, the ice was thin and there was plenty of open water, Dr. Webster said. Scientists have now shown why ice conditions in the […]