The end of the Arctic as we know it
- ‘Hot, sour and out of breath,’ the northern ocean is ailing faster than expected, with potentially catastrophic consequences for all of us
The demise of an entire ocean is almost too much to grasp, but as the expedition sails deeper into the Arctic, the colossal processes of breakdown are increasingly evident.
The first fragment of ice appears off the starboard bow a few kilometres before the 79th parallel in the Fram Strait, which lies between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. The solitary floe is soon followed by another, then another, then clusters, then swarms, then entire fields of white crazy paving that stretch to the horizon.
The melt is not simply a seasonal process. The natural thaw that starts with spring’s warm weather is being amplified by man-made global heating. The Arctic has warmed by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, twice the global average. Some hot spots, including parts of the Fram Strait, have heated up by 4 degrees. There are variations from year to year, but the trend is clear and accelerating.
Sea ice is melting earlier in the spring and freezing later in the autumn. Each summer it thins more and recedes further, leaving greater expanses of the ocean exposed to 24-hour sunlight. This is driving back the frontiers of ice and fragmenting one of the planet’s most important climate regulators. It is also creating a series of feedbacks that are accelerating the Arctic melt. Several are only partially understood.