Who Owns the Arctic?

New warning on Arctic sea ice melt

By Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News, April 7, 2011

 

Scientists who predicted a few years ago that Arctic summers could be ice-free by 2013 now say summer sea ice will probably be gone in this decade.

The original prediction, made in 2007, gained Wieslaw Maslowski's team a deal of criticism from some of their peers.

Now they are working with a new computer model - compiled partly in response to those criticisms - that produces a "best guess" date of 2016.

UTC-built oxygen generator fails on U.S. submarine

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

ABOARD USS NEW HAMPSHIRE, Arctic Ocean | Mon Mar 21, 2011 

(Reuters) - The machine that produces fresh air aboard the USS New Hampshire submarine failed during a mission under the vast ice cap of the Arctic Ocean last week, prompting the submarine to use an alternate oxygen candle system instead.

Another big-ice Arctic thaw, say experts

Randy Boswell, Postmedia News, September 9, 2010

Arctic Ocean sea ice has experienced another severe meltdown this year, with the approaching end-of-summer minimum representing the third-biggest thaw since satellite monitoring began about 30 years ago.

This year's retreat from a winter maximum of about 15 million square kilometres to a September coverage area of just five million square kilometres also means that the four greatest melts since satellite measurements began in the late 1970s have occurred in the past four years.

Arctic ice melting faster than feared: study

John Bowman, CBC News, February 5, 2010

The head of the largest climate change study ever undertaken in Canada says the Arctic sea ice is thinning faster than expected.

The Canadian Coast Guard ship Amundsen remained mobile all winter during the Arctic Ocean for the Circumpolar Flaw Lead study. (Emily Chung/CBC)

"It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic projections," said University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead study. A flaw lead is the term for open water between pack ice and coastal ice.

Russia launches icebreaker to boost Arctic oilfield

MOSCOW, Dec 18, 2009 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin launched an oil tanker on Friday capable of slicing through over a metre of ice, bringing Russia a step toward its decade-long ambition to launch its first offshore oilfield in the Arctic.

Arctic trail blazers make history

Artyom Liss,  BBC News, Arkhangel, September 19, 2009

Two German ships have become the first Western commercial vessels to navigate the Northeast Passage - a shipping route which goes from Asia to Europe around the Russian Arctic.

One of the captains told the BBC that their journey opened new, exciting possibilities for the whole international shipping community.

Foreign ships in North underline sovereignty issues for Canada

Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen, September 12, 2009

A historic voyage this week by two German cargo ships across the Northern Sea Route above Russia highlights the challenges — and potential missed opportunities — confronting Canada in the Arctic, says a leading expert on polar issues.

UBC professor Michael Byers, whose book Who Owns the Arctic? is being launched this month, says the transit of the German vessels in the company of Russian icebreakers — widely reported Friday as a landmark commercial passage from East Asia to Western Europe via Arctic waters — underscores Canada's current inability in the Northwest Passage to match Russia's readiness to exploit economic opportunities and assert sovereignty in the melting polar realm.

Thinning ice already increasing traffic in Northwest Passage

Ottawa not doing enough to ensure Canadians control commercial shipping there, experts say

Bob Weber, Canadian Press, Globe and Mail, June 15, 2009

The thinning Arctic ice pack is already producing the much-anticipated surge in commercial shipping through the Northwest Passage.

And as the pace of ice loss accelerates, experts say the federal government is not keeping up to ensure Canadians control it.

Arctic Ice Is Melting

The 30-year decline is accelerating, new data show

Washington Post, Editorial, Saturday, April 11, 2009, A12

MAKE NO mistake, Arctic Sea ice is melting. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the maximum extent of the winter sea ice cover for 2008-09 was the fifth-lowest on record. Underscoring their point, the agencies added, "The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-09)."

Arctic losing thick sea ice, U.S. data show

Oliver Moore & Paul Koring, Globe and Mail, April 7, 2009

HALIFAX, WASHINGTON

-- The amount of thick sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk sharply, according to new U.S. surveillance data, adding urgency to Canada's push to exert sovereignty in the North.

But Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said yesterday it could be decades before the Northwest Passage is open for shipping.

"Some experts predict that the entire Arctic could be ice free by 2013, others say that this will happen by 2050," Mr. Cannon told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

"Our own Canadian Ice Service, however, believes the various internal waterways known as the Northwest Passage will not likely be a reliable commercial shipping route for decades owing to extreme ice variability."