Sixteen-foot thick sea ice-the last bastion of old ice in the Arctic-has a massive 1200 sq mile rift

The American Geological Union documents a significant rift in the Last Ice Area just north of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian arctic in May of 2020. A hole of open water in sea ice is known as a polynya, and its formation is remarkable because the ice in the area is up to five meters thick. The culprit, they discovered, was the wind. A polynya had never been observed in the area before.