Following a record winter in many ways, Arctic sea-ice cover seems poised to reach one of its smallest winter maxima ever. As of 28 February, ice covered 14.525 million square kilometres, or 938,000 square kilometres less than the 1981-2010 average. And researchers are using a new technique to capture crucial information about the thinning ice pack in near real time, to better forecast future changes. Short-term weather patterns and long-term climate trends have conspired to create an extraordinary couple of months, even by Arctic standards. “This winter will be the topic of research for many years to come,” says Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “There’s such an unusual cast of characters on the stage that have never played together before.”