At www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/74605/title/News_in_Brief_Earthenvir… we have news from a German team that have been checking the thickness of ice in the Beaufort Sea (in the Arctic) and they have found that ice formed over this current winter is thinner than it was over the last couple of years. This implies it will melt in the summer – as it does every year.
We are also informed the earth's iron heart, its inner core, can melt – this discovery was learnt from a computer simulation (see Nature May 19th).