Researchers planning to run continuous measurements and experiments of the Artic's permanent ice pack have learned it's pretty difficult (read: impossible) to study something that isn't there. It turns out the ice isn't as permanent as once believed and the mass melting of sea ice is occurrng at a faster rate than anyone originally realized.

The researchers were planning to conduct the experiments as part of Canada's largest research project planned for International Polar Year. The study on climate change in the Arctic ice ecosystem is supposed to run over the course of four years and is estimated to cost $40 million. However when the Coast Guard ship Amundsen reached the Western Arctic late last year, they discovered the ice bridge that forms every winter did not exist due to the shrinkage in the ice pack.

"It throws a real wrench into what we wanted to do. We're struggling to adapt," said Tim Papakyriakou, chief scientist for the current stage of the expedition. "We won't have as much information to follow biological processes that are changing over time out on the permanent ice," says Papakyriakou, a professor at the University of Manitoba, which is leading the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study.

Papakyriakou says that the study will be adjusted and focus largely on thin drifting ice as opposed to the thicker ice as originally intended. Over 10,000 scientists in 63 countries have committed to projects researching the Arctic and Antarctica for International Polar Year.

Hit the jump to read a more in-depth description of the disappearing ice and the work Canadian researchers are doing in the Arctic.

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