Melting Arctic Ice Opens Northeast Passage

Vivi Gorman
Posted on Friday 18th September 2009

This year, the extent of ice melt in the Arctic has opened the Northeast Passage, a shipping route from the Atlantic Ocean in Europe to the Pacific Ocean along Russia’s far northern coastline, for ice-free navigation for the fourth time in recorded history.

In August, Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent was the third lowest since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center; prior records were set in 2006 and 2007. This is the fourth time in the past five years the Northeast Passage has opened and the fourth time in recorded history, according to Jeff Masters of Weather Underground Inc.

Before the beginning of the 20th century it was known as the Northeast Passage and is now referred to as the Northern Sea Route. Russian settlers explored the route as early as the 11th century, history tells us, and several expeditions took place in the 1500s and 1700s, according to Wikipedia. The first successful voyage through the passage from east to west was in 1878 by Finnish-Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld. By that time, commercial exploration of the route had begun to transport cargo including Siberian agricultural produce. In 1915, a Russian expedition completely navigated the passage.

Ice-Free Navigation

The use of icebreakers made the route viable in later years. Recent warming has lead to receding ice, opening the passage in 2005, but closing again in 2007, Wikipedia says.

“[I]t wasn't until the record-breaking Arctic sea-ice melt year of 2005 that the Northeast Passage opened for ice-free navigation for the first time in recorded history,” Jeff Masters said, given that a last bit of ice blockage melted.

In August 2009, the Barents Observer reported that German shipping vessels were prepared to cross the Northeast Passage without assistance from icebreakers, the first time since World War II that a non-Russian vessel will travel the route, which is under Russian authority. Meanwhile, the Northwest Passage along Canada’s coast in the Arctic opened for the first time in recorded history in 2007, and again in 2008, but remained closed in the summer of 2009 due to winds pushing thick ice into the channels, Jeff Masters said.

Warmest Decades Researched

Citing a study in the journal Science entitled Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling, he said the past decade was the warmest in the Arctic in the last 2,000 years. Researchers were able to look back that far in history based on lake sediments, glacier ice cores and tree rings, he said. Prior studies have only gone back 400 years, he noted. The study found that of the five warmest decades in that 2,000-year period, four occurred between 1950 and 2000.

The researchers discovered that logically Arctic temperatures consistently decreased between 1 A.D. and 1900 A.D., but began to rise in 1900 A.D. despite the fact that Earth is 620,000 miles farther from the Sun now than it was in 1 A.D, Jeff Masters explained.

He quoted Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author of the study with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explaining that “If it hadn't been for the increase in human-produced greenhouse gases, summer temperatures in the Arctic should have cooled gradually over the last century."

The National Snow and Ice Data Center says that Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight, cooling the Arctic regions and moderating global climate, but that scientific measurements show that Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically over the last 30 years, primarily during the summer melt season.

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