Melting Ice Off Baffin Island

A rare cloudless day in the Arctic summertime allowed a NASA satellite to capture this image of melting sea ice off the coast of Canada’s Baffin Island. Coastal eddies create the swirling patterns as ice, which clings to the shore during the winter, begins to melt and retreat in the summer sunshine. While this summertime melt, captured by NASA’s Terra satellite on July 11, is typical for the season, satellite imagery shows that the extent of Arctic sea ice has declined sharply in recent decades, with this year’s Arctic sea ice extent expected to be the second-lowest ever recorded.