How extreme climate occurred?

The arctic sea ice reached its winter maximum for the year on March 15, and became the sixth lowest maximum on record but lower than average. During the time, weird, chilly spring weather in the northern hemisphere leads people to connect with the Arctic changes.

Do the Arctic changes associate with climate change? Scientists monitoring the ice as well as those trying to figure out how it affects the rest of the planet give an answer that is both positive and negative.

This time cracking of the sea ice has researchers concerned. "There is cracking every year when the ice is pushed by the winds and currents," said Walter Meier, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. "But this was particularly extreme. Qualitatively, this seems like the biggest."

A number of large cracks came up enforced by powerful winter storms. They are hundreds of meters wide, and stretched all across the Arctic.

The cracks quickly emerge and quickly froze shut, but that refrozen ice would have to be thinner than the ice that cracked, which itself was just first-year ice that started building up 4-5 months before.

All these ice changes do, indeed, have weather effects well beyond the range of polar bears.