Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist

By Stephen Leahy

“We’re going to see huge changes in the Arctic ecosystem“

QUEBEC CITY, Canada, Dec 13 (IPS)

In just a few summers from now, the Arctic Ocean will lose its protective cover of ice for the first time in a million years, according to some experts attending the International Arctic Change conference here.

A summer ice-free Arctic wasn’t due for another 50 to 70 years under the worst-case climate change scenarios examined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Things are happening much faster in the Arctic. I think it will be summer ice-free by 2015,” said David Barber, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba.

Such a “dramatic and serious loss of sea ice will affect everyone on the planet,” Barber told IPS.

Barber spent much of last winter on a Canadian research icebreaker, the Amundsen, in the Arctic Ocean as leader of a 40-million-dollar ice research project. Scientists expected the Amundsen to be frozen in place for many months during the harsh Arctic winter, when there is no sunlight and temperatures plunge to -50 degrees C. Instead the ship stayed mobile as the normally impenetrable ice was thin and weak.

“The ocean held a lot heat from the summer of 2007 when ice reached its record-breaking minimum,” Barber said.

That additional heat delayed the formation of winter ice by two months in some places. It also resulted in more storms, windier conditions and much more snow, he said. These are entirely new conditions for the region, noting that the additional snow acts as an insulator, keeping the sea ice warmer which prevents it from becoming thicker.

And if the winter ice cover is thin, then it will melt faster and over a larger area in summer, opening up more water to the heat of the sun in what is called a positive feedback loop.

By May of this year there was open water many weeks ahead of normal, exposing the cold water to heat of the sun earlier than ever, Barber said.

During summer 2007, the polar ice cap lost 30 percent to 40 percent of its ice, a record 2.6 million square kilometres less ice than the summer average minimum. The 2008 summer ice loss did not challenge 2007 for the record but was still much less than the average. Scientists believe the remaining ice was thinner than normal, setting the stage for another major melt in 2009.

Ice ruled the Arctic for a long time, but that is changing with the opening up of areas of the ocean that have never been exposed to sunlight, said Kevin Arrigo, a marine biologist at Stanford University.

Sunlight means life and Arrigo and colleagues have measured an astonishing 300 percent increase in growth of phytoplankton in parts of the Arctic Ocean. “There has been a big change in the carbon cycle even though most thought the Arctic system was too nutrient limited,” Arrigo told conference attendees.

For read full story see “Things Happen Much Faster in the Arctic”.

Other recent stories on the Arctic:

Arctic Is the Canary in the Coalmine

Arctic Meltdown Signals Long-Term Trend

Arctic Oil and Gas Rush Alarms Scientists