A raging summer cyclone has been identified bearing down on the Arctic's thinning summer ice.
Known to reach winds of up to 100 kilometers per hour, Arctic cyclones are driven by low-pressure systems that blow in counter-clockwise spirals more than 1,000 kilometers across. Though they occur during both the summer and the winter, the storms are more common -- and weaker -- during the warmer months.
"We're really watching this year with a lot of fascination," Mathew Asplin, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba, told the Canadian news outlet Maclean's, adding that they appear to be increasing in strength as the years go by.
Pairing these increasingly strong storms with increasingly weaker ice, scientists note that the toll they take on the ice is also climbing.
The storms' impact on the ice can be felt in a number of ways, including their darkening of the ice, which causes it absorb more solar energy. Furthermore, they are known to douse the cold region with warmer water carried forth from the depths of the ocean, causing melting as well. In fact, in 2009 researchers documented as one such storm broke up multi-year floes the size of Manhattan in minutes.
Then, just last year, the area was ravaged by a storm believed to have wiped out some 800,000 kilometers of ice, contributing to the year's record low sea-ice levels, according to the researchers.
This year's storm formed mid-week and is expected to die out over the weekend. However, while weaker than 2012's cyclone, the researchers warn that the ice is weaker, too.
"The effects of [the storm] are nowhere near what we saw last August," Asplin said. "But because the ice is thinner and it's already been pre-condition, and because there's less volume, it's much more vulnerable to impacts from this sort of thing."