Expedition Arctic Ocean 2026, blog post 3: Melt On Hold?
Surely it must be melting? As we are moving northward in our journey I’m surprised to find almost no active melt ponds on the sea ice. Instead, in the middle of August, the ice floes are the bright white of fresh snow; The surface reflecting as many photons as it can to preserve the ice from its potential future demise.
Image: Icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent precedes Oden as they move northward in the Arctic sea ice.
The annual retreat of the Arctic ice pack still has about 4 weeks to go, until the typical minimum Arctic sea ice extent in mid-September. Yet here, the melt process seems to be on hold, at least at the surface where a recent cold spell appears to have frozen the melt ponds, followed by new snowfall to coat the surface in white.
Collectively these factors have increased the surface albedo (or reflectance), which decreased the fraction of incident sunlight absorbed by the ice, and kicked the surface energy budget over to the negative side fairly early in the melt season. I suspect the surface melt season will soon return, with a shifting warmer weather pattern. The internal parts of the ice must still have a warm core, and bottom melt is likely still ongoing.
With only the surface sitting in suspended melt. It will be interesting in the next days to see which way it goes: back towards surface melt or continuing on towards an early fall freeze up.
/Matthew Shupe
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Last updated: 2026-08-20
Source: MISU