December 2006
Water World?
US scientists at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting have just presented data that suggests a rapid melting of the Arctic leading to the total absence of perennial sea ice by 2040. In layman’s terms, this means that the North Pole will be open seas within the next 35 years.
The melting process is not a new phenomenon, but it is now taking place at an unprecedented rate. In the past 25 years, Arctic ice coverage has been reduced by 25% after summer melts. In fact, last month the area of sea that was frozen was 2million km2 less than its historical average. Indeed, the last two years have seen two of the lowest four reaches of Arctic ice since satellite record-keeping began
29 years ago.
More worryingly, the rate of change is growing at almost exponential rate. Drawing on previous models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the planet may have previously expected a resulting sea level rise of between 10 and 90 centimetres by 2100. Now the latest IPCC findings (published a mere 5 years after the 3rd IPCC report) authored by Professor Dr Stefan Rahmstorf have suggested a rise of between 50cm and 144cm may be more likely.
These would also constitute a future long term problem in the form of a positive feedback loop. Snow and ice reflect approximately 80 to 90 percent of solar radiation back into space. However, the absence of these white, reflective surfaces would result in more solar radiation being absorbed by the underlying land or sea in the form of heat. This in turn would melt more snow and ice. As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice.
All these interrelated systems have to some extent positive feedback loops which would speed environmental change on the planet. And it is not only natural geography that would be affected. Wildlife would suffer greatly with up to 1 million species potentially becoming extinct; ocean inhabiting, oxygen producing organisms being amongst these, thus leading to the increased presence of greenhouse gasses and further heating.
Most importantly, indigenous peoples from countries lying in the Arctic Circle will find their lifestyles severely threatened or destroyed. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, a group which represents these peoples has been trying to raise this issue at international level, but with limited success.
Sadly, the melting of the arctic looks set to create a positive human feeback loop as well. As the Arctic Circle becomes ice free, new shipping and navigation routes open up, and previously inaccessible oil and gas fields offer themselves for human exploitation. Some 25% of the world’s un-extracted oil and natural gas lie in the Arctic Circle, and already disputes over ownership of the seas have seen great hostility between Denmark and Canada, two nations hardly known for their proclivity towards aggression and bullishness.
This is only the first step in a new scramble for the Arctic that will doubtless find the United States and Russia at loggerheads. One of the biggest problems is the failure of the US to ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the only existing, practical legal tool that could begin to address some of the territorial problems.
Although Norwegian Arctic expert Olav Fagelund Knudsen doubts that anyone would go to war over these rights, these disputes will only serve to push the environmental agenda further down the list of international issues as countries try to plunder the new found wealth of the north.
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