The fast-warming Arctic has started to transition from a predominantly frozen state into an entirely different climate, according to a comprehensive new study of Arctic conditions.

Open water and rain, rather than ice and snow, are becoming typical of the region, a new study has found.

The fear that action to combat climate change has been too slow has led some scientists to test unconventional methods to stem the loss of Arctic sea ice.

In the last few days of 2018, as the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, lay cloaked in the long darkness of polar night, a shrimp trawler called the Northguider ran aground off the coast of one of the islands.

After a 35 year hiatus, the U.S. Coast Guard is set to build a new heavy endurance icebreaker. The head of the sea service's acquisition office believes production on a new ship could start in five years—and will cost at least a billion dollars. According to USNI News, acquisition chief Rear Admiral Mike Haycock said the Coast Guard has finalized plans to buy a ship to replace the Polar Star, the service's only heavy icebreaker.

The warming Arctic has set another record. The average air temperature over Arctic land reached 1.3 degrees Celsius above average for the year ending in September. That's the highest since observations began in 1900. The new mark was noted in the annual Arctic Report Card, released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Arctic centres on the North Pole and reaches into North America and Eurasia.

An ancient fossil forest in Norway with tropical origins is one of the earliest forests to appear on Earth. By Mindy Weisberger. (Nov. 20)

BBC’s Frozen Planet

For millennia, the frozen lands of the far Northern Hemisphere have been a huge reservoir of carbon. The permafrost soils that characterize the Arctic and sub-Arctic tundra cover roughly 8 percent of the global land surface but hold half of Earth’s underground organic carbon and twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. Arctic tundra stores carbon during the summer and releases some of it during the winter.

In the Arctic, roads are magical. They appear in the fall and melt in the spring. Others, buckled by permafrost, undulate in the snow. Many are invisible to the naked eye — caribou migration routes that exist only by instinct. During the sunless, frigid winter, the Arctic Ocean becomes one vast road for polar bears and snowmobiles. Amid these roads, a new one is being built, an 85-mile sliver topped with gravel in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

The pounding noise shatters the ancient, eerie silence of the Davis Strait, a frigid finger of ocean separating Canada and Greenland. Thwick-thwack, thwick-thwack, thwick-thwack. It comes from above but the marine fog is thick, the source invisible. The sound gets closer, louder. THWICK-THWACK, THWICK-THWACK, THWICK-THWACK. The pilot wears an old red neoprene survival suit. But it's hot in the helicopter, and the bulky outfit's mittens...

Los Angeles-class submarine USS Hartford (SSN-768) breaking through several feet of solid ice in order to surface in the Arctic Circle.

Rolf Steinmann

Science and Shamanism in the Arctic. By Tim Fulford. (July ’13)

The town of Ny-Ålesund, the most northerly permanent civilian settlement in the world, also houses the largest laboratory for modern Arctic research in existence. By Anna Filipova.

Greenland has the world's highest suicide rate. And teen boys are at the highest risk.

The Arctic is on track to be free of sea ice this year or next for the first time in more than 100,000 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Provisional satellite data produced by the US National Snow & Ice Data Centre shows there were just over 11.1 million square kilometres of sea ice on 1 June this year, compared to the average for the last 30 years of nearly 12.7 million square kilometres. This difference – more than 1.5 million square kilometres – is about the same size as about six United Kingdoms.

As of Tuesday, the deepest cyclone in the Northern Hemisphere wasn’t anywhere near the tropics--it was spinning in the central Arctic Ocean. A surface low located near 83°N, about 500 miles from the North Pole and about 1000 miles north of Barrow, Alaska, deepened to a central pressure of 968 mb at 2 am EDT Tuesday morning, August 16. This is on par with the central pressure you might find in a moderately-sized Category 2 hurricane. The low harks back to the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012.

Shipping routes across the Arctic are going to open up significantly this century even with a best-case reduction in CO2 emissions, a new study suggests.