NASA has no idea what is causing these ice holes in Arctic sea ice. They posted a picture of the mysterious ice holes as the April 2018 Puzzler, a monthly contest in which NASA asks viewers to describe a mysterious pictured object. They know that the ice there is, as sea ice geophysicist Don Perovich told NASA, “likely thin, soft and mushy and somewhat pliable.”That means the holes could occur naturally, as warmer bodies of water “make their presence known in this particular area,” melting the sea ice, Chris Shuman, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told NASA. He's a research and development scientist with NASA and is assigned to Operation IceBridge. So he has seen a lot of ice and snapped a lot of photos of rarely seen, icy phenomena.

Source: Washington Post April 23, 2018 17:51 UTC