Arctic Obsession
Page 26
[T]he geography of the world’s coastlines would then look radically different. Miami would disappear entirely, as would most of Manhattan. Central London would be flooded. Bangkok, Mumbai and Shanghai would also lose most of their area. In all half of humanity would have to move to higher ground, leaving landscapes, buildings and monuments that have been central to civilization for over a thousand years to be gradually consumed by the sea.
The good news is that modellers predict that the Greenland ice cap will be long in melting, and the apocalyptic flooding scenario is unlikely to unfold for another thousand years. Walker and King observe in The Hot Topic, that in a 2007 study “modellers calculate that it would take a global average warming of a full 4.5°F to push Greenland over the edge, a threshold that we probably still have time to avoid.” Insofar as today’s 56,000 Greenlanders are concerned, global warming is not altogether unwelcome. Not only does the glacier’s retreat present new possibilities for the mining, as already noted, but it unlocks fresh sources of power. The melting ice provides a steady flow of fast-moving water strong enough to be harnessed by turbines and this brings promise of hydroelectric development. In 1993, the first hydro station was opened and today there are three that serve local communities. Fifteen likely sites have been identified for future possible exploitation, with some of them attracting the interest of industries that require large amounts of energy — aluminum and the Internet industry, for example. Before long we might well see the rise of smelters in that Arctic land.
As consideration is given to the effects of climate change, one must appreciate that the science of prediction is imperfect and still in its relative infancy. In any complex scientific picture there will be misrepresentations and mistakes, and the art of climate modelling is riddled with uncertainties and gaps. Like a wind tunnel to aircraft design, no scenario can perfectly reproduce the system being modelled. In the case of climate prediction, however, despite a number of uncertainties, all are producing unequivocal outcomes indicating warming.
Receding ice on water, receding ice on land. But the effect of global warming is impacting Arctic regions well beyond the ice-covered, as millions of square miles of tundra and taiga experience a ground thaw. These lands are covered with permafrost, a layer of frozen earth that remains at 32°F or less year-round without melting. In some parts, such ground is relatively shallow, in others, the depths are profound — at the mouth of Siberia’s Lena River a 4,900 foot depth of freeze has been recorded. In some regions its development is relatively recent, in others it’s ancient — at Prudhoe Bay, for example, it is over a half million years old. Permafrost thaw is impacting every facet of the Arctic, on its topography, vegetation, animal life, and on native populations, to which we shall return in Chapter 11.
Construction on permafrost is problematic: heat escaping from buildings over time melts the permafrost beneath, resulting in foundations giving way and structures folding or collapsing. Buildings erected on posts, therefore, are not uncommon in the Arctic, thus permitting the circulation of cold air beneath which obviates melt. Oil pipelines must also undergo special construction. For oil to flow freely it must be kept at 61°F, and therefore the lines must be erected on supports or, where buried, bound in insulation. The destructive shift of soil has begun to affect entire communities. Dawson City, Yukon, for example, has seen a number of buildings buckle and serious damage sustained to its infrastructure. In 2006, the city increased its annual water and sewer maintenance budget threefold due to permafrost shift. Yakutsk, a Siberian city of 320,000, has been experiencing permafrost shift so badly that one dark prediction has it that by the year 2030 none of its buildings will remain standing. (As an aside: for three consecutive winter months, this city averages a temperature of -42°F, with one monthly average having once been recorded as -98°F).
The effect of permafrost change on the landscape is alarming enough. But of immeasurably greater threat to the Arctic’s immediate health and to our planet’s sustainability is what’s beneath the surface — methane, a greenhouse gas deemed to be twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide. Scientists estimate the amount of methane in storage underground may be in the millions of tons with deposits most clearly defined in Siberia. Until recently, permafrost has effectively capped these deposits, but the thawing has punctured the lid and gas has begun to rise to the surface — bubbles of the stuff are surfacing in the summer lakes of Siberia and in the marshes of northern Sweden. One estimate issued by the Russian Academy of Sciences is that if a mere 10 percent of permafrost disappears, the release of underground gases would be equal to approximately 1.2°F of global warming. A vicious circle: emissions of carbon gasses precipitate warming, warming melts permafrost, disappearance of permafrost releases gases, gases precipitate warming.
And what of animal life? The world’s imagination seems focused on the hazards climate change presents to polar bears. Estimates of the world’s population of these animals stand at twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand, with 60 percent living in Canada and the remainder scattered in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, and the Svalbard Islands. As Arctic ice melts, the cause for concern for the future of these noble beasts becomes increasingly undeniable, with the United States government having already declared them an endangered species.
Although the polar bear is a land animal, it spends most of its time in water and it depends on sea ice as a platform for hunting. A male in good health is an avaricious eater and is capable of consuming a hundred pounds of food a day. The ringed seal is its principal fare and the hunt for these smaller mammals carries on not only offshore, but at distances away — and it requires extreme patience. Although a seal is capable of remaining submerged for as long as forty-five minutes, it usually comes up for air every five to fifteen minutes, and this it finds either in areas of open water or through one of the many breathing holes it has bored with the claws on its flippers. The bear’s keen sense of smell permits it to seek out the most recently used hole and then the wait begins — sometimes hours or even days. With luck the seal emerges and the catch is made, yielding as much as 150 pounds of dinner.
The concern here is that the platforms from which bears hunt are becoming less stable and diminishing or outright disappearing. Although bears are intrepid swimmers, the widening of gaps between suitably thick floes makes a swim between them longer and riskier — incidences of bear drownings are being noted. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) reports that in the western Hudson Bay region reductions in adult weights of the animals are being found, “correlated with loss of sea ice.” In some places, furthermore, it has been noticed that during the summer, bears are moving increasingly inland where often they have difficulty in finding food. Their only recourse is to enter villages to scavenge what they can and this brings them in conflict with humans. Alarm has been raised at the number of animals being shot in the Chukotka area of Siberia.
All said, it should be noted that agreement is not universal on the existing state and long-term prospects of bear populations. Whereas the USFWS found the situation sufficiently dire to bring the animal under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, others take exception, claiming that the bears are not under threat of extinction and they point out that in places such as Davis Strait the numbers are reported as actually increasing.
The awe and romance surrounding these majestic animals makes them the North’s headline-grabber. But the walrus is no less affected by the thinning and diminishing ice, and it certainly numbers among nature’s more singular creations. Weighing as much as 4,500 pounds, this bulky, bewhiskered marine mammal is universally found in circumpolar regions and has played an important role in native culture. The long, ivory tusks — actually molars — jutting from the corners of the mouth are the animal’s distinguishing feature, and it was the hunt for this ivory that motivated many early explorers to venture into Arctic regions. Tusks are common to both sexes, growing as much as a metre long, and are essential to the animal not only for defence against be
ars and orca whales, their two natural enemies, but as a tool in drawing themselves up onto the floes.
Like the polar bear, the walrus requires ice floes for transport in its migration north. As ice melts in the spring and summer near shorelines and floes move north, herds of walrus hitch rides on them. But with reduction of floes, travel becomes problematic and migration patterns are modified. Ice also is important for adults’ feeding. The walrus is a “bottom feeder,” living off what it forages on the sea bed — shrimp, crab, clams, tube worms, and other marine life. It therefore prefers shallower waters and, although it is capable of remaining submerged for as long as half an hour, it regains the surface more frequently literally to “take a breath.” During the search it requires rest periods, and if land is at a distance, the break is taken on the floes. With retreat of ice, the search for food off-shore becomes more hazardous through lack of resting places.
Additionally, while the mother forges for food below the surface, she deposits her young on the ice — calves take over a year to wean, and even after that they remain attached to their mothers for up to four or five years. Mothers are now found becoming separated from their calves as rapid currents of open waters whisk away the lighter and freer floes; lone pups are found swimming directionless or floating dead. “If walruses and other ice-associated marine mammals cannot adapt to caring for their young in shallow waters without sea-ice available as a resting platform between dives to the sea floor,” the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reports, “a significant population decline of this species could occur.”
One uncommon hazard to the well-being of the walrus should not be overlooked: the risk of stampedes. Walruses are gregarious animals that gather together in herds, sometimes numbering in the thousands. As ice packs are abandoned, the animals increasingly assemble along the shores where they become more vulnerable. A suddenly perceived danger launches a frantic stampede for the water, and as the behemoths rush for the safety of the sea, many of the young are squashed. Polar bears consume walruses, but are cautious of attacking them on a one-to-one basis. Instead they boldly invade a reposing herd, throwing it into panic, and in the dash for the sea many are seriously injured or killed, making easy pickings for the interloper. In 2008, Russian scientists working on the shores of the Bering Sea discovered over four thousand carcasses scattered over a three-kilometre stretch of shoreline: deaths attributed to panic. Although the world’s walrus population today is not under immediate threat, there are clear indications that change is in the air.
Climatic changes affecting the Arctic are not all related to the disappearing ocean cover. Subtle and not so subtle changes are also occurring on the tundra that affect virtually all its animal life, chief among which is the caribou — called reindeer in its domesticated state in Eurasia. Huge numbers of these migratory animals are found throughout polar and sub-polar regions — in Canada, Alaska, Siberia, Norway, Greenland, and even in northern reaches of China and Mongolia. During the brief summer they gather together on northern calving grounds in herds numbering in the scores of thousands, and at other times of the year they are found in small groups scattered far and wide.
Climate change is disrupting the caribou’s feeding habits and is tipping natural balances. Since the Stone Age these antlered herds numbered in the millions; no longer so, and although in no way are they near being endangered, the numbers are diminishing. In Alaska and the Yukon the so-called Porcupine Herd has dwindled from 178,000 in 1989 to a current estimate of 100,000. Another group, the Bathurst Herd in the Northwest Territories, has decreased even more dramatically — 75 percent since 2006. In the winter of 1996–97 in Russia’s northeastern Chukotsk Peninsula, ten thousand reindeer died of starvation due to unusual icing and deep snow packs.
Whereas the unusual feature of the walrus is its molars, that of the caribou is the hoof. The animal’s hooves are concave in form with edges that semi-annually take on startling new structures. In summer, when dampness makes the tundra soft, the pads are spongy to provide better traction; in winter these areas harden, becoming bony to allow for firmer grip of the ice and snow. In providing this endowment, nature has given the animal a tool for winter feeding. In summer, caribou rely on grasses, sedges, flowering plants, and leaves of willow and birch. In winter, mosses and lichens are the staple of the diet, and here the hard-edged hoof plays a critical role. The animal’s developed sense of smell discerns pockets of snow-covered growth, and by determined pawing and digging with their hard-edged hooves, the food is exposed — a process known as “cratering.”
Among the effects climate change is having on caribou, there are three factors which directly or indirectly interact with the animal’s feeding. Increased autumnal rainfalls deposit more water on the surface, which quickly freezes and more frequent snowfalls make for deeper ground cover. The desired mosses and lichens thus become tightly lidded, and cratering becomes more difficult. In areas of shallow snow and little icing, it takes the caribou a few minutes to forage the food; in tightly covered conditions cratering might involve a couple of hours of hard work, at double the expenditure of energy. In such circumstances, exhaustion or starvation could overtake the animal.
In the caribou’s seasonal cycle, a correlation exists between food sourcing and calving. With the approach of the birthing season in early spring, the animals move north to access newly emerging plant life. The caribou receives its cue for the migration by the increase of daylight hours, whereas the development of plant life evolves as a response to heat. Studies carried out in West Greenland by Danish scientists, for example, report that the temperature in that area has risen 7.2°F over the past few years and this has brought on a remarkable early bloom of flora. But the calving instinct embedded in the caribou for millennia is so firmly rooted in lengthening of days that by the time it does reach the fresh grazing ground it’s too late — the growth has already peaked and its full nutritional value has become lost. This phenomenon, called “trophic mismatch,” affects caribou reproduction by retarding the buildup of fat in females, which is required to bring it into heat in sufficient time to achieve pregnancy.
And thirdly, a factor to which many of us can relate to directly — caribou face the problem of mosquitoes, flies, and other aggravating insects. Nothing new in such pests tormenting animals, but with warming their numbers are increasing and the harassment is greatly exacerbated. This is particularly true in areas of the Arctic where wind velocity is low and summer temperatures rise above 55°F. Caribou are expending increased amounts of energy in coping with the aggravation — often in crazed, debilitating runs of escape, energy that is lost to foraging and fattening up for winter. Studies of herds in northern Canada and Alaska show decreases in female body fat, and since there is a direct correlation between body fat and spring calving, birthrates are decreasing — attributable not only to lessening quantity and quality of nutrition but to summertime harassment by insects.
A study of global herds by University of Alberta in 2009 makes what it calls a “dramatic revelation” — the world’s caribou population has plunged 60 percent in the past thirty years. A variety of threads have come together to cause this disturbing state of affairs: rising temperatures, melting permafrost, trophic mismatch, lengthening wildfire seasons — this plus human encroachment, particularly with expansion of pipelines, roads, and hydro corridors, all of which affect migratory patterns. Alarmists plead for the animal to be placed on the endangered species list — a premature call, perhaps, but one that might legitimately resonate within the next few decades.
The bear, the walrus, the caribou — but so also, the Arctic fox, wolf, and hare, musk ox, and the lemming. All fauna, be it herbivore or carnivore, is facing changing conditions to the habitat. Not just the larger animals and fish, but microscopic forms, as well — algae, water fleas, insect larva, invertebrate crustaceans … the organisms at the bottom of the ecosystem and food chain. In 2005, an international sixteen-member team assessed fifty-five lakes in Canada, Norway, Finland,
and Russia and found that such organisms are undergoing changes in diversity, and it concluded that the possibility is low of finding an Arctic water environment that has not undergone change through global warming. No different than in other parts of the globe, but in the Arctic the rate of development is markedly faster — the canary in the coalminer’s tunnel.
As changes occur in circumpolar land masses and fresh waters, so changes are also developing beneath the seas. Global warming and human intrusion affects the ocean’s animal life … and its currents. The creature most conspicuous in this regard is the whale, believed to be the largest known mammal ever to have lived, with the blue whale developing lengths of 115 feet and weights of 150 tons. There are two orders of these animals: the toothless baleen which feeds on plankton filtered through a tough elastic hair-like construction within its mouth, and the sharp-toothed whale, which relies principally on fish and squid. The former includes humpbacks, the blue and the gray, while the latter includes sperm whales, pilot whales, beluga, and orca, otherwise known as “killer whale” for its readiness to feed on seals, walrus, and even other whales.
Commercial whaling has been taking place in the Arctic since the early seventeenth century when whale meat, whalebone, ambergris, and particularly whale oil were in demand.[2] Estimates have it that within the first half of the twentieth century, over two million of these animals were hunted down worldwide, with stocks in Arctic regions suffering particularly severely. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) formed in 1986 by whaling nations has imposed a universal moratorium on the hunt, though allowing aboriginal people to carry on and permitting the occasional kill for scientific study. Environmentalists are quick to point out that ever since IWC was founded, Japan has continued in the commercial hunt of the animal under the guise of “scientific study.” More alarming still is that Iceland openly re-engaged in commercial hunting in 2006, in spite of any agreement.