A new research shows that a 3,000 square kilometer hole is formed in the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean, in a region that is also known as the 'Last Ice Area'.
Situated in the north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, in the north of Canada, this region is considered to be the part of the North Pole that is going to lost its permanent ice zone. Thus, species of the ecosystem will be losing one of their last havens too.
According to the researchers, formation of the polynya, the hole in the sea ice, is somewhat unusual, because of its location close to the Ellesmere coast, where the ice may have up to 5 meters of density.
One of the people who took part in the research, Kent Moore said that a polynya was not something seen in this region before. "To the north of the Ellesmere Island it is difficult to shift or melt the ice because of how thick it is and there is also quite a lot of them," he explained. "Therefore we normally don't see polynyas in this region."
This polynya seems to have formed by extreme conditions of wind during a serious anticyclon or by a storm that has high pressure and strong winds which turn clockwise.
The research that involved decades old images of the ice field and atmospheric information of it discovered that the polynyas like this were formed similarly at least twice before this too, in 2004 and 1988, but nobody noticed it.
Maybe the most important thing that this research shows is that the region is not that resistent to climate change as it was considered to be.
