sea ice

It's an auspicious first, but not necessarily a positive one: Rising ocean temperatures and melting sea ice have, over the last few years, made the fabled northern sea route between Western Europe and Russia/Asia a reality, and a German vessel is going to be the first ship to make an attempted passage this summer.

If you've been following the status of Arctic sea ice for the past few years, hearing scientists herald the potential coming of an ice-free Arctic summer may sound like old news. But according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., this year, sea ice at the top of the globe may be even more vulnerable to melting than in the past.

The thought of studying sea ice conjures up visions of scientists wrapped in expedition-weight parkas straddling dangerous ice cracks to take measurements. And when it comes to on-the-ground fieldwork, that image isn't far off base. But in recent years, a remote-controlled robotic plane has made work conditions a bit more tolerable for researchers who study the ice.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were used to take aerial photos as early as the 1970s, but it wasn't until 2000 that they began to play a role in studying the physics of sea ice.