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Arctic could lose summer ice Global warming report: Shipping, oil exploration could benefit in next century Larry Persily Petroleum News Juneau Correspondent
An international study on global warming foretells of a predominantly ice-free summertime Arctic Ocean by the end of this century, though one of the authors points out such a change could be a gain to maritime transportation and oil exploration.
The report, Arctic Climate Change, published by a nonprofit environmental research center affiliated with the University of Bergen in Norway, sees a mix of good and bad from the possible loss of sea ice in the arctic.
“Broad changes in the marine ecosystem … could have a negative impact on arctic and subarctic marine biodiversity,” the report states. “However, there would be a larger area for potential fisheries, as well as increased offshore activities and marine transportation.”
And although many blame the burning of fossil fuels for greenhouse gases linked to global warming, the report’s conclusions, if accurate, could open the arctic to increased oil exploration.
“This will make it easier to explore for oil, and could open the northern sea route,” cutting 10 days in shipping time between the Far East and Europe, researcher Ola Johannessen told Reuters and AFP news services in Europe earlier this month.
“State-of-the-art … climate models both predict a dramatic decrease of the ice cover, which could result in a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer at the end of this century,” the report states in its conclusions. The work was based on decades of surface air temperature and sea ice statistics. Arctic sea ice has shrunk Researchers determined arctic sea ice has shrunk by more than 300,000 square miles in the past quarter-century, an area equal to more than half of Alaska. The melt reduced arctic ice cover by more than 7 percent, reaching a record low level in September 2002, the report states.
Greenhouse warming will drive up average arctic temperatures by twice the global average over the next 50 years, with carbon dioxide from industrial and vehicle exhaust pegged as likely culprits for the climate change, the authors said.
“We show two pronounced 20th century warming events, both amplified in the arctic,” the report states. Whereas arctic warming of the 1920s and 1930s likely was caused by natural climate variability, such as winds and ocean currents, the report sees otherwise for the 1980s and 1990s.
“We believe there are strong indications that neither the warming trend nor the decrease of the ice extent and volume over the last two decades can be explained by natural processes alone,” the researchers wrote. Water could absorb more CO2 In addition to opening the Arctic Ocean to shipping, the predicted ice-free waters could have another consequence. The water could absorb more carbon dioxide. “Exposure of vast areas of the Arctic Ocean with open cold water, which has a high capacity for carbon dioxide absorption, could become a new and important sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” the report concludes.
“The bigger the ocean is, the more carbon dioxide it will be able to absorb,” Johannessen was quoted by a European news service.
The university’s Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center produced the report, which took three years to complete and was funded by the European Union, the Research Council of Norway and the International Association for the Promotion of Cooperation with Scientists from the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union.
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