Some media coverage of the latest Arctic news

Oldest sea ice in the arctic starts to melt

Sea ice north of Greenland - some of the oldest and thickest in the Arctic - has broken up for the second time this year, a phenomenon never seen before. Satellite images show ice melting around the coast of the island closest to the North Pole, opening up waters that are usually frozen, even in summer.

The Washington Post totally politicises it. It's all just part of the crusade against Donald Trump

This is the day that the climate change fight was obviously lost

A particular challenge of the fight over climate change, if not a unique one, is that the shifts accrue subtly. The climate has changed stunningly quickly in global terms but slowly in human terms, allowing us to rationalize, wave away and downplay.

It’s that slowness, the ability to adjust to slight changes, that has led to the political fight over how to address climate change. The effects of the warming planet are only intermittently tangible, and there are still winters, and there’s a robust vested interest by major corporations that sell coal and natural gas and oil in continuing to sell coal and natural gas and oil.

The issue of climate change rose to the national consciousness as polarization in U.S. politics spiked. That national attention was spurred in part by Al Gore’s 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth,” meaning that Gore and his politics became part of the association many Americans made with the issue. Climate change is now one of the most politically polarizing issues in the country. Gallup polling shows that there’s a nearly 50-point gap between the parties in belief in the effects of a warming planet having already begun. More than 8 in 10 Democrats think global warming has been demonstrated; only a third of Republicans agree.

A new study also reveals that some areas in the Arctic are no longer freezing, suggesting that areas that have been frozen for centuries are at risk of thawing. When they do so, plant material that has been frozen could begin to decompose, releasing methane into the atmosphere. Methane is much better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

Elsewhere in the Arctic, the annual minimum in sea ice coverage has been steadily dropping, meaning that less and less of the Arctic Ocean is covered by ice. This year is well below the norm in terms of August coverage.

But then came a new report Tuesday with worse news: For the first time on record, the thickest Arctic sea ice began to break apart this year.

“The thinning is reaching even the coldest part of the Arctic with the thickest ice,” Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center told the Guardian. “So it’s a pretty dramatic indication of the transformation of the Arctic sea ice and Arctic climate.”