There has been a marked decline in the summer extent of Arctic sea ice over the past few decades. Data from autonomous ice mass-balance buoys enhance our understanding of this decline and the factors which control it. These buoys monitor changes in snow deposition and ablation, ice growth, and ice surface and bottom melt. Results from the summer of 2008 showed considerable large-scale spatial variability in the amount of surface and bottom melt. Small amounts of melting were observed north of Greenland, while melting in the Southern Beaufort Sea was quite large. Comparison of net solar heat input to the ice and heat required for surface melt across all the regions monitored showed only modest correlation. In contrast there was a strong correlation between solar heat input to the ocean and bottom melting. These results suggest that local solar heating is the predominate source of energy for bottom melting and that additional factors, such as longwave radiation, impact surface melting.