Wake up call from the Arctic
Since the launch of NASA’s Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) in late 1978, satellites have been monitoring Earth’s polar ice caps. While Europe has the dedicated ice-watcher Cryostat-2, the United States uses meteorological satellites to observe any polar ice changes. On August 26th these satellites gave mankind some bad news:
The Arctic Ice Cap is the smallest it has ever been since satellite observation began.
According to the scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA who broke the news, the Arctic sea ice on August 26th was measured to be 1.58 million square miles, or 27,000 square miles below the previous recorded low of 1.61 million square miles set in 2007.
Could this just be a freak occurrence?
AS NSIDC scientist Walt Meier emphasized, put into the context of the last several years this information is “an indication that the Arctic sea ice cover is fundamentally changing”.
A prime example of this change is the possibility of sea-ice free Arctic summers. In its 2007 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that the Arctic could be ice-free “by the latter part of the 21st century”. However, according to NSIDC scientists Julienne Stroeve and Walt Meier, this prediction is now a stark underestimate and in reality the Arctic could have sea-ice free summers as early as 2050. Even this estimate is deemed by many to be conservative and some expect a sea-ice free Arctic by 2025.
So what will America’s possible future of sea-ice free summers look like?
To start, it begins with economic gain.
With a smaller Arctic ice mass, America could capitalize on new natural resources and commercial opportunities such as fisheries, more expedient shipping routes, Arctic cruises, and, most importantly, the vast reserves of natural gas and petroleum that lie beneath the Arctic ice. The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that “90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids” could be found beneath the Arctic (For a more detailed overview of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic check out ASP Policy Analyst Nicholas Cunningham’s work on the subject). However, this future quickly turns dark.
With this new prediction for sea-ice free summers in the Arctic, other conditions that had initially appeared further off could become a lot more imminent. Cataclysmic scenarios such as a release of the methane stored in permafrost or the breakdown of the ocean’s circulation process would still be unlikely, but a vast increase in the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet could become a reality. Greenland’s ice sheet is “1.9 miles thick and contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 25 feet (7.5 meters)”. As the Arctic ice disappears, less ice will be reflecting back the sun’s heat and more dark ocean will be absorbing it, thus warming up the ocean around Greenland.
While the ocean won’t rise 25 feet all at once, it is predicted to rise at least a foot by 2050 if current trends continue.
So with America’s possible future laid out, can we afford to simply wait? Undoubtedly the answer is no. Something must be done.
We can start by making climate change a more salient issue in this year’s upcoming election and not simply rhetoric.
For more pictures and videos on the Arctic ice provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center click here.
For more information on the Arctic and America’s relationship to it, visit ASP’s detailed Arctic page.
