The North-West Passage, the sea route that runs along the Arctic coastline of North America, should be perilously clogged with thick ice this time of year. However, the passageway is now almost completely ice-free.
"Since August 21 the North-West Passage is open to navigation. This is the first time that it happens," Nalan Koc, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute's climate change program, told reporters in Longyearbyen, a town in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
"The Arctic ice sheet currently extends on 4.9m square kilometers. In September 2005 it measured 5.3m square kilometers."
Koc quoted research from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, where scientists monitor the surface of the Arctic ice sheet at regular intervals. Last week they noted "the imminent opening" of the North-West Passage.
"Analysts confirm that the passage is almost completely clear and that the region is more open than it has ever been since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972," they said in research conclusions published on the center's website.
The route was first navigated in the early 1900s by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who later beat Robert F Scott in the race to the South Pole in 1911. Amundsen and his crew took nearly two years to pick their way through a labyrinth of narrow lanes of open water and thick ice. But now it’s pretty much smooth sailing.
The news is another global warming milestone and somewhat expected. It has long been believed that Arctic sea routes, including the North-West Passage and its northeast counterpart along the coast of Siberia, will become more passable as the Earth's temperature climbs. Both are considered strategic cargo routes because they are shortcuts between the northern parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In a few years the route could be completely accessible to commercial shipping.
As inaccessible areas of the planet become more accessible, we can expect nations to become increasingly territorial in claiming those areas as there own. Historically, much of the Arcmtic has been uninhabitable, and therefore the question of ownership wasn’t all that important. But over the past few decades things have started to heat up—both literally and figuratively.
Canada and Denmark, for example, are currently embroiled in a battle over sovereignty over Hans Island, a small, uninhabited barren knoll off of Greenland.
Already the Russian gas giant Gazprom is eyeing the exploitation of the world's largest gas offshore field, Shtokman, off the coast of northern Siberia. This month Russia caused international controversy when they planted a flag on the seabed under the north pole to symbolically claim the region. The act has more than just annoyed Canada, who claims the area belongs solely to them.
Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has pledged to spend billions defending Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic if necessary, and is planning a military deep-water port.
Last month, Harper announced that six to eight new patrol ships will be built to guard the Northwest Passage sea route in the Arctic, which the U.S. insists does not belong to Canada, or anyone else. U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins has criticized Harper's promise to defend the Arctic, calling the Northwest Passage "neutral waters."
However, Harper refuses to step down on the issue stating, "Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic. We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it."
Currently, several countries are competing to secure subsurface rights to the Arctic seabed including Canada, Russia, the United States, Norway and Denmark. According to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
Posted by Rebecca Sato
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