Sailing north

...until you can't get north no more. Apparently, scientists were "shocked" to discover that there was an ice-free passage all the way to the North Pole this summer.

PARIS (AFP) - European scientists voiced shock as they showed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole itself.

The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Perennial sea ice -- thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer -- had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.

Vast patches of ice-free sea stretched north of Svalbard, an archipelago lying midway between Norway and the North Ple, and extended deep into the Russian Arctic, all the way to the North Pole, the agency said in a press release.

Still, I'm not sure why anyone would be shocked at this point. If it wasn't this summer, it was going to be next. Or the one after that. This, in case you're curious, is the area we're talking about:



Summer ice normally retreats to the north coast of Greenland, but this seems to be new - large bodies of open water large enough to sail a ship in, all the way North.