Arctic News: Water near North Pole

Friday, September 4, 2026

Water near North Pole

Water is visible near the North Pole, as illustrated by the satellite image below, dated September 4, 2026.

While much water being visible near the North Pole, Arctic sea ice volume is currently not the lowest for the time of year, as illustrated by the image below.

Why isn't Arctic sea ice volume currently at a record low? There still is a lot of relatively thick sea ice present North of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The image below shows Arctic sea ice thickness on September 3, 2026.

Distortion of the Jet Stream can cause extreme weather events to become more extreme. As illustrated by the combination image below, this can cause more snow to fall over the Arctic Ocean, which can thicken the sea ice or contribute to more freshwater at the surface.

[ Forecasts for September 5, 2026. Click on images to enlarge ]

Stronger heatwaves and storms over land can also cause increasingly larger amounts of freshwater to get added to the surface of the Arctic Ocean in the form of water from rivers and from runoff from land. Furthermore, a freshwater lid is forming at the surface of the North Atlantic, due to ocean stratification, meltwater and increased precipitation falling down the path of the Gulf Stream.

Slowing down of AMOC can result in less salty, warm water arriving in the Arctic ocean. Less salty water can contribute to a temporary slowing down of the melting of Arctic sea ice. However, the heat does not disappear and as more heat is instead accumulating in the Atlantic Ocean, a single cyclone may suffice to abruptly move huge parts of the accumulated ocean heat into the Arctic Ocean. The freshwater lid at the surface of the North Atlantic further enables warm, salty water to be carried underneath this freshwater lid into the Arctic Ocean.

The above combination image shows the situation on September 3, 2026, with Arctic sea ice concentration in the panel on the left, and sea surface temperature anomalies in the panel on the right, with a 0.6°C higher temperature than 1981-2011 highlighted at the green circle near the North Pole.

There are almost two weeks to go before Arctic sea ice typically reaches its annual minimum. Meanwhile, the 2026 El Niño is on track to increase in strength in the course of 2026 and become the strongest El Niño on record, which could devastate the sea ice over the coming weeks.

Conclusion

The situation is dire and unacceptably dangerous, and the precautionary principle necessitates the danger to be acknowledged, while facilitating rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the outlook, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as described in posts such as in this 2022 post and this 2025 post, and as discussed in the Climate Plan group.