Arctic ice cracking up when winter still hasn't finished

The photo below is a bit confusing at first but take a close look...the dot in the upper centre is the north pole, Greenland is outlined to the lower right, northern Canadian islands to the bottom stretching out to Alaska on the far left.

See that gigantic crack extending out from Alaska? That's a crack that's widening by the hour right now, just off Barron, Alaska.

Gigantic ice crack off Barrow, Alaska

Since the middle of December, the ice has been breaking up much as it did last year in March. Last year's breaking up in March was a couple of months early. Last year also saw a record low sea ice volume for the Arctic by a long way.

Freezing temperature may cause this to re-freeze, but if these cracks and leads persist until the end of the winter (if the ice remains thin and weak), then the ice is going to vanish really fast, once the sun gets to work in summer.

Watch an animated gif of this here.

As always, superb work from Arctic Sea Ice blog (see links upper right).