Scientists discover large rift in the Arctic’s last bastion of thick sea ice

In May 2020, a hole a little smaller than the state of Rhode Island opened up for two weeks in the Last Ice Area, a million-square-kilometer patch of sea ice north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island that's expected to be the last refuge of ice in a rapidly warming Arctic. The polynya is the first one that has been identified in this part of the Last Ice Area.