Posted on 09/17/2007 6:42:02 AM PDT by presidio9
Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
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The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.
The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships.
Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005.
"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected," Pedersen said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday.
Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected — but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday.
A U.N. panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.
Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.
Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.
Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack — sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said.
Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.
"Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.
"It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all year," Ragner said. "The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes."
"Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route," he said, "but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there."
The opening observed this week was not the most direct waterway, ESA said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia, which remains partially blocked.
EXCELLENT!!! why give the chicoms money to use Panama Canal.
So they don't know if it ever happened before 1978...............
Actually, the previous low was Zero square miles, in 18,000 B.C., a veritable blink in time, geologically.
Our summer here was fairly cool, too. No triple digit days that I can remember. Drought nearly killed my weeds, though..............
and pay no attention to the fact that while the arctic icecap is getting smaller, the antarctic icecap is getting larger....since heat rises, could it be global warming?
And here in Virginia, it is like mid-fall already.
I was just able to see my breath as vapor this morning in CT. Yes, it was that cool out.
We are heading for the next small ice age. We will soon see the left change to blame America for it.
not quite cold enough for frost here, but low 40s in MI.
Isn’t there a sailor who thought he could sail through the Northwest Passage because of global warming, and now he is stuck in the ice up there?
On the one hand I have yet another pseudo-scientific "study" that says that this year is the warmest-ever-ever-ever and we're all gonna die. On the other hand, I have a 42-foot boat crushed by ice. The latter seems to be much more concrete evidence than the former to these wizened old eyes...
The benefits of Global Warming. I LOVE IT.
Wow, less than 30 years of data, but this is the lowest level "ever"... (rolling eyes)
30 years is not even a millisecond in time when speaking of global climate cycles and things... what a bunch of hogwash.
“So they don’t know if it ever happened before 1978...............
Well yes they do, there are navigation records from the Medieval Warm Period that strongly indicate an ice-free Arctic.
But if you believe in AGW, the Warm Period and Little ICe Age never happened.
Isn't there a guy who is trying to run the Northwest Passage *right now* who has gotten icebound?
I know for certain that there a couple of eco-nuts that recently took a shot at skiing to the Pole, and had to turn back because of the cold weather.
Let me do some homework on FR.... Methinks that the MSM is being a bit selective in their reporting.
Warming trend that brought about the ascendence of man continues! delays slightly the imminant coming ice age that will bury half of America under glaciers.
Oh, I guess the big picture is not important these days.
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