Chinese language - Arctic ice melt opens Northwest Passage

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WORLD / Europe

Arctic ice melt opens Northwest Passage

(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-16 14:00

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images
show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded
famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.

An iceberg melts off Ammassalik Island in Eastern Greenland in this July
19, 2007 file photo. Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record,
new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest
Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.?
[AP]

The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month
taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska
and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images
were first taken in 1978.

The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim
thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The
seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer
window for ships.

Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that
Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low
was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005.

"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the
ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected," Pedersen said
in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday.

Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could
fully open sooner than expected — but ESA did not say when that might
be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the
Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday.

A UN panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be
virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising
temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries
in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when
Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the
North Pole. A US study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's
undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.

Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap
natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm
regional wildlife.

Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during
reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack — sea ice that remains through
one or more summers, ESA said.

Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which
works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new
opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.

"Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a
stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said
by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues
to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.

"It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all
year," Ragner said. "The greatest wish for sea transportation is
streamlined and stable routes."

"Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products
from A to B on the shortest route," he said, "but the fact that the polar
ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the
Arctic and the animal life there."

The opening observed this week was not the most direct waterway, ESA
said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia,
which remains partially blocked.

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