Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world. Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing. For example, the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3,000 years before it started cracking in 2000. Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces.

The sheet of ice that covers the North Pole melted to its smallest size on record in late August, shattering the previous record set just five years ago and providing a strong sign of the long-term warming of the earth's climate."This is happening before our very eyes," said Jennifer Francis, a research professor with the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University. "It’s not something that’s happening decades from now or generations from now. It’s real and it’s now."