What do you call Permafrost when it melts?


Un-perma-frost?

Frost?

Water?

It's hard to escape the sudden flurry of articles about the Arctic right now, like this one, in which scientists are "shocked" by permafrost melting 70 years sooner than expected.  I come from a Scientific Family, so I can tell you from personal experience with various family members that scientists don't get shocked very often.  Well, maybe electrical engineers.  Zing. In my experience, the pendulum swung the other way - stoicism, reserve, and calculation would be good adjectives.  Like the Professor on Gilligan's Island.

Not shocked.

That seems bad. 

Maybe the scientists are shocked by How Wrong they were in predicting that the permafrost would melt like this 70 years from now.  I've been seeing a fair amount of that watching the news lately.  The Forecaster will bravely make a forecast about the temperature for the day, only to be proven wrong by the actual high reported by the evening news.  That seems shocking all by itself.  I'm actually considering writing a little app called "weather bingo" where you get to cover a square if you choose a high temperature forecast that turns out to be too low.  Tagline could be, Is it too hot?

Bingo.

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