The north pole camera has updated

[XemaSab]

Cross post to GD:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023351004

[FirstLight]

1. ice free?

wow...and heat waves in siberia...things are gonna get narly pretty fast here. I bet the methane bubble is not far away.

[mindwalker_i]

7. Mother Earth's got gas

And she's not afraid to (stand her ground and) use it.

[joshcryer]

2. Clearer screenshot:

[NickB79]

8. Ah, that's better

My first thought seeing the OP's image was that the camera was under water

[joshcryer]

9. Even better:

My original was capped from a video, this appears to be the original source here.

edit: fixed link

[JeffHead]

3. How much longer before we see an oil tanker or a drilling rig in that picture?

[BigL]

4. Melt Season!

It's a melt pond. Basically the first layers of snow melt and form a layer of water that makes it appear as if everything has melted. See the black and white bar below the surface? It's a solid few feet deep.
This one is just rather large!

[XemaSab]

5. Welcome to DU!

[BigL]

6. Many thanks! n/t

[joshcryer]

10. Looks like the ice has returned:

edit: OP is linking to the dynamic images, I am grabbing straight from the archive (just copy the url and remove the .jpg part and you'll see all the files).

[XemaSab]

11. I wonder if the water drained

I can't think of another explanation for the magic reappearing rods.

[BigL]

12. Not a terrible theory

The ice seems to be lower than when it was prior to the melt, based off the location on the rods. I could be mistaken, though.

[joshcryer]

13. The buoy is sticking out of the water now.

I guess the white part on the buoy has some sort of solid in there that as it freezes which causes it to float up? That way it's not crushed by the ice. Or it has some weird geometry that pushes it out of the water when the water freezes over. Like a Popsicle.

edit: I'm guessing the rig itself is connected to the buoy so when it's in water it sinks under (or at least, bounces around, floats around).

[joshcryer]

14. That sounds right, gif:

My initial thought was that the buoy was simply floating on top of the water but it's obviously sitting on a large ice structure. Fascinating.

[NickB79]

15. I wonder if the current storm hitting the area cracked the basin

That the water was sitting in?