http://GreatWhiteCon.info/broken - An animation revealing how the Arctic sea ice changed between September 1st and September 18th 2013. The (preliminary) 2013 NSIDC minimum extent of 5.099 million km² occurred on September 13th.
By September 18th the "Polar Polynya" appears to be reopening, and moving ever closer to the North Pole.
As you can see, the sea ice in the Arctic has many holes and cracks in it, and lots of open water around it. It is not therefore an "unbroken sheet that already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores", as maintained by David Rose in the Mail on Sunday edition of September 8th.
The music is "Clean Song" by West Somerset duo "De Larje" from the charity compilation album "Water Connects Us": http://Water-Connects-Us.org
Original AMSR2 microwave images by the University of Hamburg: ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/AMSR2/
Arctic sea ice extent data from NSIDC: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
