The North Pole, that great bastion of eternal cold and barren ice, is a lake.

It’s a shallow lake. It’s a cold lake. But it is, actually, a lake.

According to the North Pole Environmental Observatory, the summer ice is melting away at unprecedented rates. The sea of snow is now meltwater.

 

See a time-lapse of the arctic winter, turning to summer, right here.

Live Science wrote on their site that the temperature in the arctic is indeed warmer than average this summer.

In early July, temperatures were 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) higher than average over much of the Arctic Ocean, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, based in the United States, the extent of sea ice has been shrinking for decades.

 

The lake at the top of the world is shallow, and is purely made of melted ice. It is not sea water poking through to the surface. But melted water absorbs far more of the Sun’s radiation than ice does, adding to the heating of the surrounding area.

UPDATE (July 25 @ 10am EST):

In response to several questions about the location of the webcam in relation to the geographic or magnetic North Pole, we include the following map. As the Northern reaches of our planet are not, in fact, static pieces of land but moving ice floes, the location of the webcam is not static either. The following map shows an approximation of where the webcam is (solid green line close to the pole). You can read more details about the research project and see current webcam images here.

Grist has done a great job of tracking just how much the Northern Ice Cap is retreating here.