Arctic Melting — 2015

With help from global warming and the new El Niño, 2015 was a hot year. In fact it was the hottest since we’ve been keeping records—and it ended with a bang!

• Robinson Myer, The storm that will unfreeze the North Pole, The Atlantic, 29 December 2015.

The sun has not risen above the North Pole since mid-September. The sea ice—flat, landlike, windswept, and stretching as far as the eye can see—has been bathed in darkness for months.

But later this week, something extraordinary will happen: Ai...