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Biggest North Pole mission back from 'dying Arctic'
By Patrik STOLLARZ with Yannick PASQUET in Berlin
Bremerhaven, Germany (AFP) Oct 12, 2020

The Arctic: key things to know
Paris (AFP) Oct 12, 2020 - The Arctic, with its extreme climate and immense oil and gas resources, is also threatened by global warming.

Here are some key facts about the increasingly strategic region:

- What and where is it? -

The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, unlike the Antarctic at the other end of the world, which is a continent surrounded by water.

Its vast territory of 21 million square kilometres (7.7 million square miles) stretches from the North Pole to the Arctic Circle.

Bordered by North America, Asia and Europe, it spans eight countries or territories: Russia's northernmost coast, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the US state of Alaska.

The Arctic Ocean, which covers 14 million square kilometres, connects to the south with the Atlantic and to the west with the Pacific via various straits.

- Polar nights -

Its extreme climate means living conditions in the Arctic can be very tough.

With temperatures falling sometimes below 50 degrees centigrade and with a very low level of light for much of the year -- the so-called polar nights -- its only vegetation is the tundra, a vast, treeless area of low swampy plains.

At the height of winter, the ice forms to cover 14 million square kilometres of ocean. In summer, it melts to some five million square kilometres.

- Four million inhabitants -

Some four million people live in the Arctic region, including around 500,000 people from dozens of distinct indigenous cultures such as the Inuits, Samis (Laps) and Yakuts.

They depend on the ocean and its wildlife for food and income.

An Arctic Council was set up in 1996 to discuss issues such as the environment and economic and social development.

- Ecosystem threatened -

The Arctic, which hosts some 21,000 known animal and plant species, is one of the last vast regions of the world to remain in a wild state.

The development of human activities including fishing, transport, tourism and drilling has threatened its fragile ecosystem.

Since the 1990s, climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels has pushed temperatures in the Arctic up twice as fast as the world average.

In 2019, the region saw its second hottest year since 1900 and the second smallest ice floe ever registered.

The ice shrank even more in 2020.

Global warming, which reduces the part of the Arctic Ocean that is permanently covered by ice, puts at risk species such as polar bears and bowhead whales, seals and sea birds.

- Oil and gas trove -

The Arctic is estimated to hold around 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its natural gas reserves.

The melting of the Arctic ice cover has made the region more accessible to shipping and also oil and gas extraction.

Coveted by neighbouring countries and distant ones including China, Russia has made the development of the region's natural resources a priority.

President Donald Trump approved oil and gas exploration in the US's biggest wildlife reserve in Alaska in August.

There has been an escalation of territorial claims in recent years with Moscow, Washington, Ottawa, Oslo and Copenhagen all weighing in with demands to extend their portion of the continental shelf.

- Strategic shipping route -

Thanks to the melting ice, Russia is counting on the development of maritime traffic via the northeastern passage of the Arctic linking Europe to Asia. It has opened military and scientific bases there over the past years.

Meanwhile Canada sees the potential to considerably reduce the distance between the Atlantic and Pacific by using the northwestern passage off its coast.

Researchers on the world's biggest mission to the North Pole returned to Germany on Monday, bringing home devastating proof of a dying Arctic Ocean and warnings of ice-free summers in just decades.

The German Alfred Wegener Institute's Polarstern ship returned to the port of Bremerhaven after 389 days spent drifting through the Arctic trapped in ice, allowing scientists to gather vital information on the effects of global warming in the region.

Mission leader Markus Rex said he and his team of 300 scientists from 20 countries had witnessed "a place of truly fascinating and unique beauty".

"We should really make every effort to preserve this world... for future generations and to use the small chance we still have to do so," he told a press conference.

Ahead of their return, Rex told AFP the scientists had seen for themselves the dramatic effects of global warming on ice in the region considered "the epicentre of climate change".

"We witnessed how the Arctic ocean is dying," Rex said. "We saw this process right outside our windows, or when we walked on the brittle ice."

Underlining how much of the sea ice has melted away, Rex said the mission was able to sail through large patches of open water, "sometimes stretching as far as the horizon".

"At the North Pole itself, we found badly eroded, melted, thin and brittle ice."

- 'Ice-free Arctic' -

If the warming trend in the North Pole continues, in a few decades we will have "an ice-free Arctic in the summer", Rex said.

The Polarstern mission, dubbed MOSAIC, spent more than a year collecting data on the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and ecosystems to help assess the impact of climate change on the region and the world.

To carry out the research, four observational sites were set up on the sea ice in a radius of up to 40 kilometres around the ship.

The researchers collected water samples from beneath the ice during the polar night to study plant plankton and bacteria and better understand how the marine ecosystem functions under extreme conditions.

The 140-million-euro ($165 million) expedition has also brought back 150 terabytes of data and more than 1,000 ice samples.

The team measured more than 100 parameters almost continuously throughout the year and are hoping the information will provide a "breakthrough in understanding the Arctic and climate system", Rex said.

Thomas Krumpen, sea ice physicist said: "For us the second phase is starting -- the analysis of data. A lot of data has returned with the ship and we will likely be busy with it over the next ten years."

The multitude of parameters will feed into the development of models to help predict what heatwaves, heavy rains or storms could look like in 20, 50 or 100 years.

- 60 polar bears -

Since the ship departed from Tromso in Norway on September 20, 2019, the crew have seen long months of complete darkness, temperatures as low as -39.5 Celsius (-39.1 Fahrenheit) -- and more than 60 polar bears.

A shot had to be fired to warn off a polar bear that came too close.

But the bigger threat was the coronavirus pandemic in the spring, which left the crew stranded at the North Pole for two months.

A multinational team of scientists was scheduled to fly in as part of a scheduled relay to relieve those who had already spent several months on the ice, but the plan had to be redrawn when flights were cancelled across the world as governments scrambled to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

During the course of the expedition, the German ship zigzagged through 3,400 kilometres of ice along a wind-driven route known as the transpolar drift.

The voyage was a huge logistical challenge, not least when it came to feeding the crew -- during the first three months, the ship's cargo included 14,000 eggs, 2,000 litres of milk and 200 kilogrammes of rutabaga, a root vegetable.

Radiance Calmer, a researcher at the University of Colorado who was on board the Polarstern from June to September, told AFP that stepping out on to the ice was a "magical" moment.

"If you concentrate, you can feel it moving," she said.

yap-fec/hmn/jxb

MECOM GROUP PLC


Related Links
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ICE WORLD
Arctic odyssey ends, bringing home tales of alarming ice loss
Berlin (AFP) Oct 9, 2020
The biggest Arctic expedition in history will return to the German port of Bremerhaven on Monday after a year-long mission, bringing home observations from scientists that sea ice is melting at a "dramatic rate" in the region. Coronavirus restrictions mean there will be no grand fanfare when the German Alfred Wegener Institute's Polarstern ship docks. But the information gathered by researchers as the ship drifted through the ocean trapped in ice will be vital to helping scientists understand th ... read more

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