Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.
Last night Professor Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the official US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), hailed the publication of the images – on an obscure website by scientists at the University of Bremen, Germany – as "a historic event", and said that it provided further evidence that the Arctic icecap may now have entered a "death spiral". Some scientists predict that it could vanish altogether in summer within five years, a process that would, in itself, greatly accelerate.
But Sarah Palin, John McCain's new running mate, holds that the scientific consensus that global warming is melting Arctic ice is unreliable.
The opening of the passages – eagerly awaited by shipping companies who hope to cut thousands of miles off their routes by sailing round the north of Canada and Russia – is only the greatest of a host of ominous signs this month of a gathering crisis in the Arctic. Early last week the NSDIC warned that, over the next few weeks, the total extent of sea ice in the Arctic may shrink to below the record low reached last year – itself a massive 200,000 square miles less than the previous worst year, 2005.
Four weeks ago, tourists had to be evacuated from Baffin Island's Auyuittuq National Park because of flooding from thawing glaciers. Auyuittuq means "land that never melts".
Two weeks later, in an unprecedented sighting, nine stranded polar bears were seen off Alaska trying to swim 400 miles north to the retreating icecap edge. Ten days ago massive cracking was reported in the Petermann glacier in the far north of Greenland, an area apparently previously unaffected by global warming.
But it is the simultaneous opening – for the first time in at least 125,000 years – of the North-west passage around Canada and the North-east passage around Russia that promises to deliver much the greatest shock. Until recently both had been blocked by ice since the beginning of the last Ice Age.
The most direct route through the Northwest Passage has opened up fully for the first time since records began, the European Space Agency (Esa) says. Historically, the passage that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Arctic has been ice-bound. But the agency says ice cover has been steadily shrinking, and this year's drop has made the passage navigable. The findings - based on satellite images - have raised concerns about the speed of global warming.
The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled sea routes in the world - a short cut from Europe to Asia through the high Arctic. Recent years have seen a marked shrinkage in its ice cover, but this year it was extreme, Esa says. It says this made the passage "fully navigable" for the first time since monitoring began in 1978.
"We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3m sq km (1,2 sq miles)," Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Center said. He said it was "about 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006". "There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100, 000 sq km (38,600 sq miles) per year on average, so a drop of 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) in just one year is extreme," Mr Pedersen said.
The Northeast Passage through the Russian Arctic has also seen its ice cover shrink and it currently "remains only partially blocked," Esa says.
Scientists have linked the changes to global warming which may be progressing faster than expected. The opening of the sea routes are already leading to international disputes. Canada says it has full rights over those parts of the Northwest Passage that pass through its territory and that it can bar transit there. But this has been disputed by the US and the European Union. They argue new route should be an international strait that any vessel can use.
TreeHugger reports that the first geoengineering experiment is about to begin in the South Atlantic - "International Team Of Scientists To Test South Atlantic Carbon Sink In 2009". Yikes - isn't reducing our carbon emissions a lot easier than conducting these sorts of dangerous experiments for evermore ?
In an attempt to test the possibility of mitigating the effects of global warming, scientists from India, Germany, Italy and Chile plan on “sinking” carbon emissions into the Scotia Sea, off the Antarctic Peninsula in the South Atlantic, during January to March 2009.
By depositing 20 tonnes of non-toxic iron sulfate into a 1,000 square kilometre area of the sea, it is hoped that the iron particles will create fertile conditions for the explosive growth of phytoplankton or algae and microorganisms that will soak up carbon dioxide.
Carbon sinking (also called ocean seeding, iron fertilization, carbon capture and sequestration) was first tested 15 years ago as alternative method of “managing” global warming, though there are questions to the long-term environmental ramifications of experiments on this kind of scale.
Earlier this year, companies such as Planktos have conducted trials in seeding an area near the Galapogos to observe the effects. According to Planktos, the process involves dilute infusions of iron over large areas and if ocean seeding is successful in the long term, it will apparently not only restore plankton populations but also improve water quality, buffer the surface water acidity and assist in sinking large amounts of carbon into the ocean to slow climate change.
However, the amount of carbon absorbed or “sunk” will hinge on how much plankton sinks to the sea bed. There are concerns that the increase in plankton will result in more methane and nitrous oxide being released into the atmosphere – possibly worsening the situation.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that the sea’s capacity to absorb carbon has decreased: recent data published in Science shows that the Southern Ocean’s ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere has been reduced approximately 15% every decade since 1981, due to changing levels of substances such as iron sulfate. The result is a possible feedback loop from the intensification of increasing carbon emissions, coupled with the ocean’s declining ability to absorb carbon. It is a worrying scenario and only time will tell if large-scale, international experiments such as these will have a positive impact on slowing climate change.
Posts
