Melting of the Pole

The end of Jim McNeill's Ice Warrior Expedition is just another sign that climate change is affecting our polar regions first. And it's a sign we should take notice of.

The change in the Arctic summer sea ice is the biggest impact global warming is having on the physical appearance of the planet.

- Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge

Ice-free Arctic

In the beginning of January I wrote a story about Jim McNeill and his quest to conquer the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility. The expedition was set to start at the beginning of February but due to dangerous ice conditions the journey was cancelled. “My team and I are bitterly disappointed but over the last few weeks I have been looking very carefully at what has been happening along our route from Ellef Ringnes Island to the position of the pole and it seems the whole of the ocean has been in motion. Usually it freezes during the winter period and becomes relative stable with few leads of open water and very little movement of ice at this time of year. This hasn’t happened,”  McNeill had said.

Carried away by Winter Olympics and endless snow, it seems almost unthinkable that ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole. Sea ice, which is formed when seawater freezes in the polar oceans, is an important component of the global climate system. The amount of ice formed reflects a delicate balance of heat and mass exchange in both the atmosphere and the ocean. Since 1979, scientists have used satellite pictures to map the extent of such ice, and despite cool temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean this January, the extent of Arctic sea ice continued to track below normal. According to Björn Erlingsson, the expedition's lead scientist, the lower-than-normal pressure in the Arctic shifts the ice drift leaving thin ice that is difficult to cross.

Mark C. Serrez, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in the U.S., points out that generally it has been an unusually warm winter over much of the Arctic Ocean. “Over the last week of so, temperatures have been ranging from about -20 to -25 C. As I speak, ice extent for the Arctic as a whole is about 1,000,000 square kilometres below average.” With current climate trends this means that the seasonal Arctic ice could melt in 20 years or less. “As we lose the ice, the very colour of the Arctic is changing from pure white towards the blue colour of the ocean breaking through. We’re seeing areas of formerly treeless, windswept tundra transition into shrub vegetation as the climate warms and different things grow,” says Serreze.

Ice-free Arctic summers bring along change. For one it increases the opportunities for exploration of an ice-free Arctic Ocean, including increased shipping and resource exploration. But it also entails the loss of habitats and forced changes in the use of coastal oceans by northern populations. Martin Summerkorn, climate change adviser to the World Wildlife Fund Arctic Program, points out that without ice to reflect sunlight, the Arctic Ocean would warm more quickly, resulting in the release of greenhouse gases stored in the Arctic permafrost soils. These soils contain twice as much carbon gas in the atmosphere. The warming of the Arctic surface waters would accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, speeding up the sea level rise. "This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world's population and extreme global weather changes," he says.

Last year, Polar explorer Ann Daniels told WideWorld that what’s happening in the Arctic is going to affect the rest of the world. “It’s going to affect the climate that we live in, it’s going to affect weather patterns, and it’s going to affect not only the indigenous wildlife but also the tiny little microbes. Everyone focuses on the big, majestic polar bears because that’s easy to sell to the public, but actually it’s going to affect the microbes and that’s going to affect the whole ecosystem; which then affects the seas, which then affects the world. The very ends of the world are so fragile and so extreme that you can see what’s happening up there in a way that you can’t always see down here.”

Future of Arctic Expeditions

Mark Serezze says that even in a 'greenhouse world', it’s cold in the Arctic in winter. “But the Arctic Ocean in summer will probably be more-or-less ice free a few decades from now. There will still be winter ice. Hence, in summer, you may be able to kayak to the North Pole,” he jokes. It's difficult to predict what the future for Arctic exploration will look like. A hundred years ago explorers only used themselves and dogs to haul sledges. Today they wear immersion suits and swim too. Polar explorer Alex Hibbert agrees that the days of travelling on the ocean without floating sledges, like Weber and Malakhov did in 1995, are certainly over.

“The starting window for North Pole attempts is usually late February to mid-March and it is at this time that the ice seems to be particularly poor,” he says. To cope with the stretches of open water, explorers need to change their techniques and equipment. There is certainly a future for North Pole expeditions though: “Teams will simply have to alter their plans to adapt to the new environments, such as setting out earlier in the spring or using paddle-sledges. It may reduce the number of attempts on the Pole by commercial teams as the conditions may require the expertise of professionals more than ever,” says Hibbert.

On the other hand, the reduction in sea ice will definitely stimulate interest in Arctic areas that were previously considered inaccessible. More people will want to venture North and people will set new goals. I wouldn't be surprised if very soon the first person will swim to the pole. Real explorers are, of course, more realistic. “I don’t think it will be long before we can circumnavigate the North Pole in a ship; in fact I have just such an expedition in the planning stages,” says McNeill.

McNeill, Hibbert and other explorers are used to drawbacks and willingly set new goals, collecting data and helping fight climate change. “Over the many years of doing these expeditions I’ve come to learn that you can pit your wits against Mother Nature and get away with it but she always holds the upper hand and you have to respect that. This makes the word “conquer” rather inappropriate but believe me, I have every intention of getting there and achieving our critical scientific aims in the process,” says McNeill.