New study anticipates the death of the Arctic: What are the consequences for humanity?
The Arctic crosses the threshold of its death, how long will it exist? That question is being asked by scientists and researchers around the world. A new Nature Climate Change study predicts that summer sea ice floating on the surface of the Arctic Ocean could be completely gone by 2035.
It turns out that until relatively recently, scientists thought we’d get to that point but by 2050 at the earliest. In other words: the Arctic is crumbling and its happening faster than anyone could have imagined decades ago. That is one of the conclusions of the aforementioned study cited by The Guardian.
The research reports that at the end of July, 40% of the 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf, located at the northwestern tip of Ellesmere Island, broke away into the sea. This is how Canada’s last completely intact ice shelf no longer exists.
This happened while on the other side of the island, the northernmost of Canada, the ice caps of St. Patrick’s Bay disappeared completely.
Two weeks later, scientists concluded that the Greenland ice sheet may have already passed the point of no return. What does this mean? That the annual snowfalls are no longer enough to replace the snow and the loss of ice during the melting of the 234 glaciers in the territory that occurred during the summer.
Additionally, in 2019 the ice sheet lost a record amount of ice, an amount equivalent to one million metric tons per minute. On the other hand, northern Siberia and the Canadian Arctic are heating up three times faster than the rest of the world.
How the Arctic warming advances
In the last decade, Arctic temperatures have risen by almost 1 ° Celsius. So, if greenhouse gas emissions stay on the same path, warming would increase to 4 ° C by mid-century.
The research refers to the words of Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientific researcher at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. “The latest models basically show that whatever emissions scenario we follow, we will lose the summer (sea) ice sheet before mid-century”, she says.
She also adds that, “even if we continue to heat below 2 ° C, it is still enough to lose that summer sea ice in a few years”.
“There is no facet of Arctic life that remains intact due to the immensity of change here (…). The Arctic as we know it, a vast icy landscape where reindeer roam, polar bears feast and the waters teem with cod and seals, will soon freeze only in memory”, says the study reviewed by The Guardian.
Permafrost in critical condition
Permafrost is the subsoil layer of the earth’s crust that is permanently frozen, by its own nature and not by any incident. It is not ice, it is frozen soil and can be extremely poor in rock and sand or very rich in organic matter. Therefore, it is found in very cold or periglacial regions.
In Canadian Arctic outposts, permafrost is thawing 70 years ahead of schedule. As a result, the roads began to bend and the houses to sink.
In Siberia, giant craters punctuate the tundra as temperatures soar, reaching 38 ° C in July in the city of Verkhoyansk. This spring, one of the fuel tanks at a Russian power plant collapsed, spilling 21,000 metric tons of diesel into nearby waterways. This tragedy was attributed to the decline in permafrost.
Scientists explain that thawing permafrost releases two powerful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere: carbon dioxide and methane. This simply exacerbates global warming.
The fauna also suffers the blows of climate change
The giddy heat has sparked massive wildfires, now common in the warmer and drier parts of the Arctic. In recent summers, flames have swept through the tundra of Sweden, Alaska and Russia, destroying native vegetation. This also hurts millions of reindeer and caribou that eat moss, lichens, and rough grasses.
In addition, disastrous rain-on-snow events are also on the rise, encasing the ungulates’ preferred forage foods in ice. Between 2013 and 2014, an estimated 61,000 animals died on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula due to mass starvation during a rainy winter. Additionally, the world’s reindeer and caribou population has decreased 56% in the last 20 years.
Those losses also devastate indigenous peoples, whose culture and livelihoods are intertwined with the plight of reindeer and caribou. For example, the Inuit ethnic group uses all parts of the caribou: sinew for thread, skin for clothing, antlers for tools, and meat for food.
In Europe and Russia, the Sami people herd thousands of reindeer across the tundra. Warmer winters force many of them to change their way of earning a living, for example by providing complementary food for their reindeer.
Who are taking advantage of the Arctic crisis
While the planet, fauna and indigenous peoples are harmed, there are others who find opportunities in this crisis. Melting ice makes the region’s abundant mineral deposits and oil and gas reserves more accessible by ship.
For example, China decided to invest heavily in the increasingly ice-free North Sea Route above Russia. It does so because it could reduce shipping times between the Asian tip and Europe from 10 to 15 days. Furthermore, the passage through the Canadian Arctic archipelago could soon offer another shortcut.
On the other hand, in Greenland, the melting ice is unearthing a large amount of uranium, zinc, gold, iron and rare earth elements. It is precisely for this reason that in 2019 Donald Trump expressed his intention to buy Greenland from Denmark. This is how the Arctic has never been so politically relevant before.
Tourism was also experiencing a boom, even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. How? Crowds of wealthy visitors are drawn to this exotic region in hopes of taking the “perfect selfie” under the Northern Lights.
The impact of winter tourism increased by more than 600% between 2006 and 2016. The Norwegian city of Tromsø, nicknamed the “Paris of the North”, received 36,000 tourists between 2008 and 2009. In 2016 that number soared to 194,000.
But behind that “interest” is another unspoken sentiment: this could be man’s last chance to experience the Arctic as it has been for thousands of years.
What can humanity do?
Stopping climate change in the Arctic requires a huge reduction in fossil fuel emissions. Sadly, the world has made little progress on this issue despite the obvious urgency. Years pass and many greenhouse gases persist in the atmosphere. Even if all emissions were stopped, it would take decades for those gases to dissolve and temperatures to stabilize. And, in that period, more ice, permafrost and animals would continue to be lost.
“It has to be both a reduction in emissions and also a sequestration of carbon at this point”, Stroeve explains. “We need to take out what we have already put there”.
According to the study, other strategies can also help mitigate damage to the ecosystem and its inhabitants. The Yupik village of Newtok, northern Alaska, where thawing permafrost erodes the ground underfoot, will be relocated by 2023.
Conservation groups are pushing to establish several marine conservation areas throughout the High Arctic to protect affected wildlife. In 2018, several organizations signed an agreement banning commercial deep-sea fishing in the central Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years. But, that must be complemented with more government regulations on new transport and extraction activities in the region.
The sad reality is that “the Arctic of the past is already gone”. If the current climate trajectory continues, it will be impossible to return to the conditions of just three decades ago.
However, and despite the dark scientific landscape, many experts believe that there is still time to act, to preserve the Arctic as it once was. But, that would require the world to come together to prevent further damage and conserve what remains of this unique and fragile ecosystem. In conclusion: a rather utopian hope.
