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.
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
I occasionally watch the show about Alaskan Crab fisherman. This past season, they had to contend with pack ice, it was much, much farther south than usual this year.
So, who do you believe - your lyin' eyes, or eco-dogooders that are motivated only by the need to help save the world? (and make a buck, and gain absolute power?)
People are idiots. IMHO, this whole GW craze has peaked, and should start to peter out, soon.
Exactly. In Central New York, it was very cold much of the summer. I love a good hot old fashioned summer but it doesn’t happen much any more. We get a bit of it but not much, at least not enough for me.
See #15
After the cancelled rendezvous with the nuclear-powered icebreaker, Taymyr last Monday morning and holding station for a further 24 hours while the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute received the latest satellite images from Radarsat and their own Envisat pictures to determine whether the inshore channel might provide a last minute reprieve, of which I was doubtful given the forecast for northerly winds, I set sail for Tiksi, three hundred miles to the southeast. During the hours of darkness, 10.00pm to 4.00am, I hove-to unwilling to risk a confrontation with unseen ice. Gale force winds were unremitting and with the winds screeching eerily through the rigging, Barrabas being tossed unmercifully by the seas, I was too exhausted to concern myself further and slid blissfully beneath the blanket of sleep.
Reporters need to embed with some of the excursions so they can report from the front lines.
Um Guys,
You DO realize that cooler summers along the Eastern seaboard of North America is supposed to be one of the INDICATORS of global warming right?
The Eastern seaboards climate is heavly moderated by the Gulf Stream which brings warmer water (and temperatures) North along the coast from the Tropics.
One of the things some global-warming climatoligists predict is that as the global temperatures rise and more sea-ice melts it will reduce the salinity of the North Atlantic and thereby slacken the strength of the Gulf Stream (and other Atlantic currents) thereby causing COLDER summers along the Eastern seaboard.
Note, I am NOT one of those eco-nuts. While I happen to believe that some warming IS occuring.... it is less then is generaly hyped and probably more to do with a variation in solar activity then anything happening here on earth. The global climate is a VERY complicated system... and there is alot of unsettled science on it.
My main point in writing this is to advise you guys not to use anecdotes like “it was cold this summer here”.... in order to try to make some sort of point about what’s happening with the climate on a global level.... it won’t tell you anything meaningfull.... and it tends to make our side look not very well informed about climate science.
If you want to counter the global warming hype masters... use good arguements, there are plenty of them out there.
Why would we want to do that? As you so eloquently point out, they will just change the rules again and again whenever some inconvenient reading pops up that blows a hole in the main theory. It's getting cooler here? Global Warming? It's getting warmer here? Global Warming?
The effect of man's presence doesn't represent in the bump in the overall pavement of the Earth's systems? Global Warming? Mars is getting warmer? Global Warming. Mars is getting cooler? Global Warming? Where does it end?
my thoughts exactly!
LOL
Temps will be in the 80’s this week.
So how far does the North Atlantic region go?
I’m in MI. Our summer was cold. We had maybe two weeks of 90 or above. I took my puppy out on Sunday morning and saw my breath. This morning it was 38 degrees.
I had to cancel a Fiesta with our Tweens group twice this summer (in August!) because it was too cold to go on our waterslide.
I’m ready for some global warming.....
Not really a climate expert....but I doubt MI would be effected by the Gulf Stream.
The point is.... you can’t derive anything about the global climate from looking at one particular spot and saying something like “We had a really cold summer these year... the Earth must be getting cooler”
What I DO know is that global climate is an incredibly complex system....and a myriad of factors are going to influence what the climate is in any given season in any given locale.... you can’t really extrapolate much about what is going on with the system as a whole by looking at any one one small part of it over a small period of time.
If the Earth, as a whole, was heating up...there WOULD be some regions that would probably get colder. Same for the reverse....if the Earth were cooling down, there probably would be some regions that got hotter.
A small example, most glaciers have been in retreat in recent years...but there are also a few that have been advancing rapidly at the same time.
That’s really all I was trying to get at.
BTW, the ocean salinity thing isn’t junk science (from what I understand). Salinity levels play a major role in how ocean currents are formed.... and currents are one of the largest influences on local climates of coastal regions.
Years ago, an old Viking map was found. It was speculated that Columbus was aware of it, perhaps had seen it. Anyway, it showed a direct route to the Bering strait from northern Europe. So around 1000 AD, the Northwest Paggage was open enough for sailors to reach Asia. Of course by the end of the 16th century when Europeans were looking for it, the climate had changed and the way was blocked. Henry Hudson was one of the victims of the climate change. that earlier had doomed the Greenland colonies.
Sure they do. Art Bell had a guy on that drove Bell crazy, refuting all of Bell's lunatic rantings on [man-made] GW.
In the process, he pointed out that the Brits in the 19th century launched five expeditions to find "the Northwest Passage". The first expedition got the furthest, and each succeeding trip met the growing ice earlier and earlier. "GW is cyclical, Art!"
Bell was so taken off his Algor script, that he had absolutely rabid enviro, anti-human wackos on for the next three shows.
Art bell went off the deep end loooong ago...........
Henry Hudson was the victim of mutiny, as was his adolescent son and one crewman.............
“Um Guys,
You DO realize that cooler summers along the Eastern seaboard of North America is supposed to be one of the INDICATORS of global warming right?”
What about central Texas?
Central Texas??? You should know by now, we don't count. We're only near flyover country!
He really lost it after his wife died, and that's when he went nuts over GW, and ceased to be entertaining.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.