Two separate scientific surveys of climate change at the North and South Poles have just revealed new evidence that the poles are warming faster than expected.

The International Polar Year 2007-2008 endorsed the work of over 160 different scientific projects to carry out a wide variety of research. Together, the scientists’ work illustrates the dramatic effects that global warming is having in the Arctic and Antarctic. Among these findings are:

• The rate of ice loss in Greenland is accelerating
• Arctic permafrost contains more carbon dioxide reserves than previously believed, meaning that more greenhouse gases will be released into the air as the permafrost melts
• The amount of Arctic sea ice was the smallest it has ever been in the summers of 2007 and 2008 since recording began thirty years ago
• Insect and fungi infections have increased due to warmer temperatures

Researcher with Siberian children. Copyright IPY.

The IPY survey is unique in that it includes research from indigenous communities. While for most people, melting ice caps and warming oceans are problems thousands of miles away without precipitable effects, it’s easy to forget that there are people whose lifestyles are changing in the present due to global warming.

The IPY report is available here in various languages.

UN Scientists working for the International Panel for Climate Change have also found that 11 out of the past 12 years, the earth experienced the warmest global surface temperatures in recorded history (Voice of America).

Yet another study brings more troublesome news with regard to polar bears, which are having an increasingly difficult time obtaining food. Scientists compared blood samples taken from bears in 1985-1986 to blood samples taken twenty years later and were able to determine that 1/3 of the animals are now fasting.

Polar bears are not the only animals affected by disappearing ice caps. Ring seals need ice to nurse their pups. If the population of ring seals decreases, this will adversely affect polar bears, which prey on them.

It is estimated that 2/3 of the world’s polar bears will be gone by 2050. The only remaining populations will be in the Canada’s High Arctic and western Greenland.

CBS News World Watch has a story about the future of summer ice in the Arctic, along with a video.

Three scientists from Great Britain, together forming the Catlin Arctic Survey, will head to the North Pole at the end of the month. They will attempt to discern whether summer ice in the Arctic will cease to exist within the next five years, a sign which would point to major disturbances in the earth’s environment. The group will travel towing sledges for three months, covering 700 miles in 50-below weather - an endeavor which hearkens back to the days of Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton. Every ten centimeters, a radar strapped to a scientist’s backpack will send out a pulse that will provide information on the ice and snow below.

An ice-free Arctic in the summer would allow new shipping and fishing opportunities. On the other hand, as more and more ice disappears, temperatures in the area will increase even faster due to greater amount of dark, heat-absorbing ocean exposed to the sun — affecting everything from indigenous practices to Arctic marine ecosystems.

While the Arctic is seen primarily as a place to harvest the earth’s resources, it is also the site of major efforts to preserve the earth’s riches for posterity. On the island of Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, scientists are working hard to increase the number of seeds at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a gene bank where various strands of all sorts of crops are being stored to save them from extinction due to both manmade and natural catastrophes such as war and global warming.

Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News writes that scientists are well on their way to protecting 100,000 different varieties of plants from African cowpeas to South American eggplants in the so-called “Doomsday Vault.”  Thus, in this little corner of the Arctic where countries are racing to drill for oil, mine for minerals, and trawl for fish, they are also hurrying to scurry away seeds for the long and barren winter that may lie ahead.

Even this apparently noble cause to safeguard seeds for future generations is not without controversy. GRAIN, an international NGO, believes that the vault is “unjust” because it “takes seeds of unique plant varieties away from the farmers and communities who originally created, selected, protected and shared those seeds and makes them inaccessible to them.”

However, their criticism seems to overlook the true aim of the vault, which is not to control the world’s seeds, but rather to protect them from the perils created by both men and nature. Many seeds stored in vaults in Africa have already been destroyed or lost due to civil strife and unrest. Svalbard appears to be one of the most remote and safest refuges on earth, then, as long as the race for the Arctic does not escalate.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Background photo credit: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Illustration by Mia Bennett.

Popular Science has an article on its website examining the effects of thawing permafrost in the Arctic. New research reveals that the melting ice does not just have localized effects on towns in places like Alaska and Scandinavia, which are sinking as the ice beneath them melts. In addition, vast amounts of greenhouse gases currently stored in the permafrost could be released into the atmosphere, making the thawing ice a problem with global ramifications.

One somewhat counterintuitive point the article makes is that an increase in the number of trees on the Arctic tundra thanks to warmer temperatures and better growing conditions could actually serve to accelerate global warming. While trees are normally thought of as a check against global warming, since they store carbon dioxide and release oxygen, in this case, more trees mean increased melting of the permafrost. Previously, snow would cover the low-lying  moss and lichen and reflect nearly 90% of sunlight away from earth due to the albedo effect. Tall trees, on the other hand, are not so easily covered by snow. Consequently, their dark, exposed leaves absorb sunlight, warming the ground and thawing the permafrost below.

Yet even trees are not immune to the negative effects of thawing permafrost. While they may increase in number, many trees can no longer stand upright in the mushy ice, resulting in a phenomenon known to Alaskans as “drunken trees” — just another bizarre scene in the topsy-turvy world of the Arctic where polar bears drown and Iceland wants to join the E.U.

Drunken Trees. Credit A. Cooper/Alamy, from Popular Science online.

Last Thursday, a U.S. federal fishery panel based in Seattle voted to restrict nearly 200,000 square nautical miles of American waters north of the Bering Strait from industrial fishing. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council made the move in response to concerns over global warming rather than overfishing. Melting ice has made the waters, which are located in the Chuchki and Beaufort Seas, more accessible to fishermen — and thus possible exploitation and overfishing. Oceana, an international marine conservation organization, observed that the closure is “among the largest-ever precautionary and preventative measures in fisheries management history.” Most efforts made to preserve marine resources, on the other hand, occur after a fish stock has already crashed.

The Anchorage Daily News condoned the closure, noting that it is best to protect the area, since so little is known about what the area’s resources hold. Although there are presently no commercial harvests in U.S. Arctic federal waters, pressure to fish in the areas is likely to increase as the ice melts. However, the new restriction can be overturned only if there is “scientific conclusion that a specific fishery and the ecosystem in general could tolerate commercial fishing.”

The proposal will be forwarded to the U.S. Department of Commerce for final approval. If approved, the restriction will benefit the State Department’s efforts to have similar environmental regulations passed by the Russian and Canadian governments to protect their own territorial waters in the Arctic. Representatives from the U.S. State Department sat in on the panel’s proceedings, demonstrating the increasing importance of the Arctic in international affairs.

Courtesy Oceana