And even more bad news from the Arctic: for the first time in 125,000 years, both the North-West and North-East passages are open simultaneously. The passages had been blocked since the last Ice Age; their opening allows the Arctic to be circumnavigated by sea for the first time in human history.
But while this is a boon to transport, it's a disaster for the global climate. We're seeing the last years of the Arctic ice-cap. And as it melts, it exposes more water, reducing the Earth's albedo and helping to push the global temperature even higher. Positive feedback, in other words - and its likely to have nasty effects elsewhere in the global climate system.
