Northwest Passage Nearly Open:

This image shows sea ice around the Northwest Passage as observed by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on August 22, 2007. In this image, blue indicates open water, white indicates high sea ice concentration, and turquoise indicates loosely packed sea ice. The black circle at the North Pole indicates no data as the satellite does not make observations that far north. McClure Strait, Parry Channel, Victoria Strait, and McClintock Channel (north of Victoria Strait), all appear nearly ice-free. North of McClure Strait, an area of sea ice remains, but it is fragmented.

Oops. Sorry about that, Mother Nature. Our bad.

For those who are a little behind on such things, here’s the Wikipedia entry for the Northwest Passage.

Along the same lines, it looks like we’ll hit the lowest ever level of sea ice coverage in the Arctic this year, breaking the old record set in 2005.