Through The NW Passage: As Season Lengthens, "Everything Is Going To Change"

[hatrack]

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Eddy Carmack, a leading oceanographer with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, has carefully charted the changes in the Arctic since he first visited in 1969. He is part of a diverse group of business, science and government leaders who are traveling aboard the Louis, brainstorming about the Arctic and its future. The ship is wending its way from Newfoundland in Canada's northeast, with stops in Resolute and Cambridge Bay, all the way, ultimately, to the Beaufort Sea off the country's northwest coast.

Carmack says the ice on this voyage looks the same as earlier trips he's made on the Northwest Passage, but it has a different feel. "I would say what we're experiencing now is softer ice, it's not as formidable, it's yielding to the pressure of the ship, it's breaking easily. And that's because the ice itself is warmer," he says.

Rising air and water temperatures in the Arctic mean there is less ice each year, and for longer periods of time. Steve MacLean, president of the Canadian Space Agency, says that trend is expected to continue throughout the Northwest Passage.

"It's always opened up for the last 15 years for about six weeks in the summer. Now it is expected that period will extend. And because it's going to extend, everything is going to change," MacLean says.

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http://www.npr.org/2011/08/15/139556207/arctic-warming-unlocking-a-fabled-waterway?sc=fb&cc=fp

[benld74]

1. There goes my Ice Road Truckers Show! Damn,,,

[DCKit]

2. Nah. If anything, it'll make it a lot more "interesting". nt

[Kablooie]

3. Sure. Trucks dropping through the ice along with the polar bears.