Will ice melt open fabled Northwest Passage?

Clues In The Arctic
ALASKA, Aug. 29, 2002


The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy has been plowing through the frozen expanse that is the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska in search of answers about climate change. CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen reports.

"The Arctic Ocean is one of the few places we know little about, says Capt. David Visneski. "We know more about the moon in some places than we do about the Arctic Ocean."

The hostile, forbidding appearance of the Arctic would seem to make it the last place to look for clues to climate change, and yet the reality is the environment here is quite fragile: A place where even a small increase in temperatures can have a dramatic impact.

"We think it's vulnerable and there are changes happening already," says chief scientist Lee Cooper.

In the last 100 years, parts of the Arctic have warmed by 10 degrees Fahrenheit, 10 times the global average. The icepack, home to the world's polar bears, has retreated by 15 percent in just two decades. Its thickness reduced by almost half.

"In my lifetime or my daughter's lifetime, the Arctic might be ice-free," Cooper says.

One predictor of change is the minute shrimp-like crustacean that lives on the ocean floor and an important member of the Arctic food chain, which Healy researchers found is scarcer than expected.

"With climate change these animals will be absent," says Sharon Smith, of the University of Miami. "We'll be catching animals one-tenth the size, and they're so small they won't be able to support the large birds and mammals that are here now."

Work on this research ship, funded by the National Science Foundation, is dangerous. Sampling equipment, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, is in constant danger of being snagged and lost.

Samples tell researchers if the Arctic's retreating icepack and thawing tundra ashore are releasing more carbon dioxide, accelerating the greenhouse effect and global warming.

"Today it's raining out, not snowing," says oceanographer Lou Codispoti. "And I don't remember seeing much rain up here."

Codispoti says the environment has changed dramatically since his first research cruise here nearly 40 years ago.

"On the first day of this cruise, I saw thunderheads off the Alaskan coast," he says. "I never seen them before."

And what concerns him most is the rate of change. Ice core samples show a similar warming happened within a few years 1,000 years ago.

Known as the "medieval warm period," it opened the northern latitudes to agriculture, triggered a population explosion, and cleared the way for the Vikings to start exploring through ice-free seas. Good back then, but now?

"When you think about a planet with 6 billion people and our agriculture and you think about the implications if we had rapid climate change like that again, the downside risk of that is as bad as the downside risk of terrorism," says Codispoti.

No question the top of the world is a much warmer place. The mystery is whether the change is permanent and whether man's role is casual or a major cause.

Ooh! It's Hot Up Here
BARROW, Ala., Aug. 28, 2002


Summer is very short at the top of the world.

So any really warm day sends the people of Barrow, Alaska racing outdoors to go seal hunting, drag the dusty town streets or just hang out on the playground until midnight under the 24-hour sun.

Normally, Barrow has ice floes right on the beach, even during the height of summer. But a few weeks ago, as CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen reports, it almost looked like southern California, right down to the heat waves.

Barrow is not just the northern-most city in the United States; it may be the first city in the country to feel the effects of climate change. This normally very cold place is warming up in ways few people imagined.

"I saw the first person in a bathing suit in Barrow today – girl running around in a black bathing suit," says one resident. "First time I'd ever seen that."

People are used to seeing chicks here - the snowy owl kind – and Arctic foxes. But now jellyfish are washing ashore in unprecedented numbers and village elders are really buzzing about another newcomer.

"We never seen no mosquitoes, but right now there's mosquitoes around at the top of the world," says Simeon Patkotak.

Ice cellars carved out of the permafrost are thawing, forcing native Inupiat to borrow modern freezer space to store their whale meat.

"That is my grocery store," says whaling captain and Barrow fire chief Eugene Brower. "That is my garden out there. That ocean is very precious to us."

And more dangerous now, Brower says, is the unstable sea ice, which has trapped spring whaling crews on drifting floes.

"You get a lot more heat (and) early break-up is really noticeable," he says.

Temperatures in Barrow have risen 4 degrees over the past 30 years. The Arctic ice pack has retreated 15 percent and is only half as thick as it used to be.

"When there's no ice out there, (and) if there's a big wind, we get waves," says Glenn Sheehan, of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium. "If we get big enough waves, we get erosion – so more waves, more erosion."

And that may be Barrow's biggest problem: A shoreline and city that's being eroded away. Just last month, the Island village of Shishmaref, Alaska voted to move to higher safer ground for the same reason. The 4,000 people of Barrow may face the same choice.

"If the village has to be moved, it will be virtually impossible," says Sheenan. "Imagine moving all that."

Barrow is a window on climate change; a change that is indisputable. The question is the cause. Is it man, nature or some combination? This summer, scientists have been cruising the frigid waters off barrow in search of clues.
 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020830071739.htm