The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it’s nearly all gone

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During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished.

“The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water,” Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine, said over email.

At its narrowest point, the Arctic strait between the U.S. and Russia is 55 miles across, and there’s a prominent theory that people once crossed from Asia into North America across an exposed Bering land bridge (back when sea levels were lower). In modern times, however, this frigid waterway usually builds ice through the winter, reaching its greatest extent in late March.  Read more…

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