As sea ice shrinks, Arctic shipping options expand

December 22, 2013 by Earth Policy Institute in Global Economy.

Courtesy: Nordic Bulk Carriers

On October 7, 2013, the Nordic Orion bulk carrier ship completed its journey from Vancouver, Canada, to Pori, Finland, having traveled northward around Alaska and through the Northwest Passage. It was the first large commercial freighter to make the voyage through these typically ice-covered Arctic waters. Avoiding the longer journey, through the Panama Canal, reportedly saved $80,000 in fuel costs and five days in travel time. Taking a deeper route than the Panama Canal also allowed the ship to carry a heavier load of its cargo: coal.

A second Arctic shipping option, the Northern Sea Route, is opening up even more to transportation. In 2007, only two ships made the entire trip north of Russia. In 2010, ten ships made the passage — and then the route got even busier. Seventy-one ships completed the voyage in 2013, including the first cargo ship from China. While the Chinese vessel was transporting shipping containers, the most common cargo loaded on ships taking the Northern Sea Route has been fossil fuels, particularly diesel fuel.

This jump in traffic was made possible by a dramatic shrinkage of ice coverage. Arctic sea ice has plummeted to lows unseen in the past millennium. Historical records show that the summertime Arctic ice coverage varied little for more than 1,400 years. Then it began its freefall: over each decade since satellite records began in 1979, summer sea ice extent has shrunk by nearly 14 percent. (See data.)

In the summer of 2012, an area of ice larger than the U.S. and Mexico combined melted, dropping coverage of the Arctic Ocean to just half the average minimum coverage between 1979 and 2000. Arctic sea ice did not shrink quite as much in the 2013 summer melt season, but it still fell to the sixth smallest extent and the fourth smallest volume on record. Very little thick, multiyear ice remains.

As the snow and ice that reflect much of the sun’s energy melt, more heat is absorbed, accelerating the melting and amplifying global warming. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the lower latitudes; since 1960, this region has warmed 2 degrees Celsius (nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit). The Arctic has been mostly covered by ice for some 125,000 years, but scientists predict that the ice cap could disappear in the summers well before 2050. Researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles have modeled how ships could potentially traverse the Arctic in the most direct route — across the North Pole — by then.

Ironically, the melting is facilitating the transport and development of fossil fuels — the very substances that are driving temperatures higher. The disappearing ice is luring companies that are hoping to tap into the estimated undiscovered 90 billion barrels of oil and 1.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas in Arctic territory— a risky endeavor, to say the least. Russia is building up its liquefied natural gas industry, developing a major plant in cooperation with French and Chinese energy companies on its northern coast, with plans to export the fuel to Asia along the Northern Sea Route.

While shipping and energy companies view the melting as a windfall, scientists view it as a warning. Arctic warming alters weather patterns far from the region and also accelerates sea level rise globally with the melting of the massive Greenland ice sheet. It may be too late to prevent an ice-free Arctic in the summertime, but there is still time to avoid the worst consequences of rising temperatures by leaving fossil fuels underground and rapidly transitioning to an energy economy centered on renewables.

— Janet Larsen and Emily E. Adams. 

Canadian expedition spotlights thinning Arctic sea ice

September 28, 2013

Phil Hirschkorn, Terrell Brown   (CBS News) NEW YORK –

From afar, we watched this summer as four Vancouver-based men launched their custom-made, kevlar-coated, wood and fiberglass row boat, the Arctic Joule, from Canada’s Northwest territory in early July, heading east, toward Greenland.The rowers — Kevin Vallely and Frank Wolf, from Canada, with Denis Barnett and Paul Gleeson, originally from Ireland — set out to navigate part of the mythic Northwest Passage, the Arctic waters between Europe and Asia, a long-sought shortcut between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

For centuries, frozen ice made this sea route impassable. But the thinning Arctic sea ice, particularly during the summer melting season, has opened up the waters like never before.”Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” stated the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published Friday. “The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”

The IPCC called the last three decades the warmest 30 year period of the last 1,400 years and found most of the gained heat has been stored in the oceans, spurring the melting of the polar ice caps. The panel forecast sea levels could rise three more feet by the end of this century.

four Vancouver-based men launched their custom-made, kevlar-coated, wood and fiberglass row boat, the Arctic Joule, from Canada’s Northwest territory in early July, heading east, toward Greenland.

Last year, summer Arctic ice covered the smallest area since satellite measurements began, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center, in Colorado. This summer was the sixth smallest area.

“Countless explorers have died in the Northwest Passage just because it’s been chock full of ice over hundreds of years,” said rower Kevin Vallely. “There’s still ice up there, but there’s far less ice than there was before, and we really wanted to bring awareness to that by traversing it solely under human power in a 25 foot row boat.”

Their motto, painted on the boat, was “pulling together against climate change.” The was no engine and no sails on board. Just two men at a time rowing, changing shifts every three hours.

“We did go for 50, 60, 70 hours at a time, and we got into the groove of doing that. You get a little sleep-deprived, but you do get your naps,” Vallely said. “We needed to keep moving.”

Their determined movements covered, on average, 21 miles a day. When the crew took a break to sleep, they typically dropped anchor at sea and snuggled in sleeping bags below deck in a tiny cabin most of us would find claustrophobic.

“At anchor, we could all four of us just squeeze in there kind of like sardines,” rower Frank Wolf said. “Imagine like four dudes in boat about a month in having eaten just freeze dried food — what that would have smelled like.”

There were no baths, unless the rowers took a dip in the frigid waters.

Promoting alternative energy sources, three solar panels built into the boat powered their GPS and a desalinator that let them drink converted sea water.

Part of the mission was data collection for the Canadian Department of Oceans and Fisheries, so the rowers took measurements of the ice and water.

The rowers, ranging in age from 32 to 49, were all experienced adventurers. Vallely had trekked on skis across the South Pole in record time. Wolf has cycled the frozen Yukon to the northern coast of Alaska. Gleeson and Barnett had rowed the Atlantic.

But the Arctic adventure came with its own special danger.

“A piece of ice actually came in when we were sleeping at anchor and pinned our boat and was actually pulling us underneath the ice,” Wolf said.

That ice was 40 feet thick. Vallely cut the boat’s anchor so they could escape.

“The reality is this ice is supposed to be up at the pole. It’s breaking up now,” Vallely said.

Besides thinning ice, wildlife was another indicator of climate change.

They expected to see herds of musk-ox and caribou — and did — but it was a surprise to see grizzly bears roaming in polar bear country.

“They’re seeing all these species up there that never used to be up there coming up from the South and now living in the Arctic,” Wolf said.

In case the grizzlies set their sights on them, the rowers slept with a shotgun but never had to use it.

In the end, wind was their worst enemy, impeding their progress and sometimes making it impossible to row for entire days.

“It was the journey that mattered the most. We learned so much out there, and we tried everything we could,” Vallely said. “Where we stopped we had to stop.”

The rowers suspended their journey earlier this month after 55 days and 1,163 miles, reaching Victoria Island, about 700 miles short of their goal, but making it halfway to Greenland.

Wolf, an experienced environmental filmmaker, whose last release, “On The Line” discusses the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline project, documented the Arctic rowing trip and is planning to put together a feature film about it.

“Things are melting up there and changing up there. It’s going to raise sea levels worldwide,” Wolf said. “It’s going to affect people in New York City; it’s going to affect people in Los Angeles; it’s going to affect people in any kind of coastal community.”