NUUK, Greenland (AP) — After 24 days at sea and a journey spanning more than 10,000 kilometers (6,214 miles), the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica has set a new record for the earliest transit of the fabled Northwest Passage.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — It's a special privilege for a photographer to get the chance to work in the soft light of a sun that never sets.

Just when you think you have squeezed every last drop out of the light, it changes. Shadows look different. Reflections become more vibrant. And you can't leave. You lose all sense of time and sleep easily slips away.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — For much of the year, the Arctic appears as a crumpled white sheet of ice and snow before great chunks break off around the edges in spring, forming a sea of floes that gently dance across the frigid waters.

The floating ice slowly shrinks throughout summer until another winter season starts.

WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the coldest places on Earth is so hot it's melting.

Glaciers, sea ice and a massive ice sheet in the Arctic are thawing from toasty air above and warm water below. The northern polar region is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet and that's setting off alarm bells.

"The melting of the Arctic will come to haunt us all," said German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — While it may be frigid and wet on deck, the crew of a modern icebreaker can expect creature comforts inside the ship, even saunas.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — There's ice, and then there's ice.

We encountered the first floes around Point Barrow, the northernmost tip of Alaska. Much of it was already rotten, as our ice navigator David "Duke" Snider explained. The ice was fraying at the edges. Some of it was covered in sand and dirt from crashing against the coast, while larger floes had pools of turquoise meltwater on top.

A trained eye can tell how old the ice is and where it is likely to have come from.

THE ARTIC CIRCLE (AP) — The MSV Nordica is as robust a ship as you can find, but striking out to sea —especially in the remote and icy Arctic— always carries a risk. What if something goes wrong? Who do we call for help? The short answer is: we're on our own.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — One of the big benefits of being a text reporter is that I can travel fairly light — a notebook, pencils and sharpeners. The same can't be said for my colleagues, Associated Press photographer David Goldman and video journalist David Keyton.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — The ship hadn't yet left Vancouver for the Arctic Circle's Northwest Passage when the icebreaking began — with a round of "introduce yourself to the others."

We'd already met a few crew members of the MSV Nordica icebreaker the day before, including Capt. Jyri Viljanen, a master mariner from Finland who has been going to sea for 39 years.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — Learning to drive an icebreaker like the MSV Nordica is a bit like taking dance lessons.

You start slow, with a few turns and twists on the open sea to get a feel for the way the ship moves.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — When ice floes stretch to the horizon in the Arctic Circle, threatening to strand normal ships, icebreakers are in their element.

For big vessels, they can turn quickly to avoid big blocks of ice, and can stop fast. They can slice through many ice fields without a shudder. And when the going gets rough, they can push their mighty bow on top of the ice and bust it up through the sheer force of the ship's weight.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — European explorers had long speculated about the existence of an Arctic route that connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and would avoid the long journey around South America's Cape Horn.

For centuries, able seafarers failed to find the Northwest Passage, among them John Cabot, Henry Hudson, Francis Drake and James Cook.

THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (AP) — More than a century has passed since the first successful transit of the treacherous, ice-bound Northwest Passage by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1906. Now The Associated Press is sending a text, video and photo team through the passage, where global warming is melting sea ice and glaciers at an historic rate, altering and opening up the Arctic in a way unprecedented in recorded history.