polynyas

The warming of Earth's middle latitudes is having a similar effect, increasing that temperature difference and sending stronger winds that push sea ice off the coast and expose pockets of open water, called polynyas, that give nesting Adelie penguins easier access to food.

The Seattle Times 2011

The warming of Earth's middle latitudes is having a similar effect, increasing that temperature difference and sending stronger winds that push sea ice off the coast and expose pockets of open water, called polynyas, that give nesting Adélie penguins easier access to food.

NYT > Home Page By ANDY ISAACSON 2011

The next arctic summer had been bad — almost as cold as this last summer, 1847, during which there had been no summer ice melt, air warmth, or return of birds or other wildlife here — but the whaler Pluribus was in more predictable pack ice and drifted more than seven hundred miles south until, late that next summer, they'd reached the ice line and been able to sail their way south through sludge-ice seas and narrow leads and what the Russians called polynyas, cracks in the ice that opened up as you watched, until the American whaler reached open water and could sail southeast to a Greenland port for refitting.

The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

Seasonal features such as polynyas or migratory routes are also named, as are patterns of currents and sea-ice movements.

Indigenous knowledge of the Arctic environment 2009

It is fed by methane-rich lakes underlain by yedoma (wind blown matter making organic-rich permafrost), with its quickly warming waters largely driving a 500% increase in flaw polynyas (ice-free sea areas in winter) over the ESAS, around the river's mouth, during the last two decades alone.

Nathan Currier: Methane in the Twilight Zone (Third Episode) Nathan Currier 2012

And, unlike in the Gulf of Mexico where part of the methane could move up the water column and then escape into the air, in the Arctic Ocean from mid October on there is no chance of escape as the water is covered over with ice, except few patches of polynyas -- open water between sea ice.

Subhankar Banerjee: BPing the Arctic, Again -- Fast-Tracking Shell's Dangerous Drilling Subhankar Banerjee 2011

Throughout the 1990s the economic development activities that caused these detrimental processes increased many times due primarily to sharp increases in oil and gas production in the coastal regions and increased ship transit through polynyas and stationary ice leads, which are vital for marine mammals and birds in the high latitudes.

Management and conservation of marine mammals and seabirds in the Arctic 2009

The contribution of Alaskan, Siberian and Canadian coastal polynyas to the cold halocline layer of the Arctic Ocean.

Marine Arctic 2009

It blocks channels, facilitating the formation of polynyas important to northern ecosystems in some areas, and impeding navigation in others (e.g., the Northwest Passage).

Marine Arctic 2009

The nature of the sea-ice cover and the system of stationary polynyas and ice leads essentially determine the intra-specific structure, dynamics of number of species and populations, and the dates and pathways of their seasonal migrations.

Management and conservation of marine mammals and seabirds in the Arctic 2009