Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years
The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Experts said they were “stunned” by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as Britain disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the north-west passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the north-east passage along Russia’s Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.
Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver which released the figures, said: “It’s amazing. It’s simply fallen off a cliff and we’re still losing ice.” The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.
Dr Serreze said: “If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice, then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children’s lifetimes.”
Full story: Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years
A new “cold” war?
This announcement will also increase political interest in the Arctic, with a number of countries currently jostling to exploit the oil and gas reserves believed to lie under the ocean, which could become more accessible as the icy cover retreats. Last month Russia claimed a huge area around the north pole, and Denmark and Canada are preparing similar claims, which rely on showing that a chain of underwater mountains that runs across the region are connected to their respective continental shelves.
“As there was in the American West in the 1800s, there’s a great land grab going on, but most of the land is at the bottom of the seafloor,” Brookings Institution scholar William Antholis said.
Under that seafloor lie giant, but largely unexplored, oil and gas fields. Over it are new, warm-water fisheries, all now accessible as ice melts away.
The melting has also left the fabled Northwest Passage  providing a whole new way for ships to travel between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans  fully open for the first time.
As the Northwest Passage melts open, an entire stretch of the western coast of Greenland becomes strategically much more important as the eastern entrance to the passage from Europe and the eastern United States.
Denmark, which governs Greenland, is watching warily as the world’s commercial and military fleets get ready to use the Northwest Passage in coming years as the accelerating warming keeps it open longer each summer.
And prospecting mineral companies have been looking at the possibility of new reserves of nickel and even diamonds along the northern coast of Greenland now becoming more accessible as sea ice shrinks away.
Overall, no one knows exactly how much mineral wealth, strategic advantage and even new warm-water fisheries profit may be produced by the great warming, but nations are jockeying for position to deal with it and take advantage of it.
“I would be surprised if this ended up leading to a shooting war,” said Bookings’ Antholis. “That said, these are the kinds of tensions that take up leaders’ time and leaders often don’t want to be bothered with.”
In centuries past, such disputes might have meant war.
That may not seem likely now, but as global warming keeps opening these waters, it’s producing new tensions among old friends.
Full story: A new cold war
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