Is there a north pole anymore?

[Deseoso]

I was looking at Google Earth the other day and, unless there is something very wrong with it, there does not appear to be any ice north of Svalbard or Greenland. Has the entire north pole melted now?

 

Sadly I asked the same thing of one of the teachers in the school I work at the other day. He did not know the answer but we were overheard by a very concerned 8 year old girl who immediately asked me where Santa lives now if the north pole melted.

[fiveworlds]

Google Earth renders using the Mercator projection of the earth.

 

 

 

 

I'm sure google has reasons for choosing that map for instance it can be folded into a perfect sphere which makes for easy rendering. It is not an accurate map.

Edited April 21, 2017 by fiveworlds

[Lord Antares]

there does not appear to be any ice north of Svalbard or Greenland. Has the entire north pole melted now?

 

Yes, the entire north pole melted overnight.

 

Jokes aside, my google earth shows about the expected amount of snow, so I'm not really sure what happened there. Are you sure you were looking at a satellite and not a map?

 

As you can see, there is plenty of snow over Greenland and Svalbard.

[Deseoso]

Yeah that is what I see as well. Am I incorrect in my understanding of the north pole? I thought the actual north pole was in fact over water, not land. The snow that is there in the picture you posted is on Greenland and Svalbard. I thought the actual north pole was separate from them. Am I not correct?

[Lord Antares]

Ah, I see what you mean.

No, you are correct; the actual POINT of the north pole is above Greenland, while the whole area around it including Greenland and some of Canada could be considered within the north pole area.

 

Hmm. I actually did some searches and browsed through dozens of pictures and links and it seems that:

 

1) the ice is at an all-time low for April (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/)

 

2) There is something wrong with the satellite image:

 

Arctic sea ice extent for March 2017 averaged 14.43 million square kilometers (5.57 million square miles), the lowest March extent in the 38-year satellite record.

 

 

14.43. mil. km^2 of ice is obviously not visible.

Instead, here is the image the linked site offers for April

 

 

Although you are correct in that the ice is melting at an alarming rate, there is still a substantial amount of it around the pole, which the satellite image from Google Earth fails to display.

 

Also, see this:

 

Edited April 21, 2017 by Lord Antares