Germany’s Maas tours Canada’s melting Arctic

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Thursday toured Canada’s far north, a vast but fragile region coveted by the United States as a potential defrosted “Northwest” shipping passage between the Atlantic and Pacific. Little publicized is that since 2016, a German-Canadian research team coordinated by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute has been testing a “passive radar” method intended to help ships navigate the shoals and narrows of the Northwest Passage.

Last May, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stumped an Arctic Council summit in Finland by welcoming “steady reductions in sea ice” that he said would open “new opportunities for trade” via the Arctic by shortening voyages.

His demurral led to the failure of the eight-nation council, which includes Canada, Russia and Norway, to issue a final statement on climate change as a serious threat — likely to have included a warning that the Arctic’s Barents Sea was nearing a “tipping point” as waters turn warmer.

Read more: Trump’s growing cabinet of climate deniers

Germany is among 13 nations with only observer status at such biannual meetings of the eight immediate neighbors of the Arctic, where temperatures are rising two or three times faster than the world average.

Inuits alone can’t stop ice melt

Maas, first making a stopover at Iqaluit (pictured above), the main town on Canada’s Baffin Island, told reporters that its 7,000 inhabitants — half Inuit — themselves had “no chance” to stop the melting of the ice in their local Frobisher Bay.

“That is our responsibility — and to witness that here and focus on it — is extraordinarily  important,” said the German minister. 

Warming in the bay had become all too evident, said host Iqaluit hotel manager Stephen Sullivan.

“We’ve had a really warm summer period … 18 to 22 degrees Celsius (64 to 71 degrees Fahrenheit) here. And that’s not normal.”  

Remote Pond Inlet

On Thursday Maas was due to fly 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) across the vast island to the settlement of Pond Inlet to witness more of the ecological impact on Canada’s Nunavut territory.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Let there be sea

  Once, only explorers in search of adventure or scientific discovery braved the icy heart of the Arctic. But the ice is vanishing. August 29, 2008 marked a turning point: For the first time, merchant ships could navigate both the Northeast Passage and Northwest Passage, without icebreakers. This ship-friendly period in summer has been getting longer and longer ever since.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Shortcut from the Atlantic to the Pacific

  The 6,500-kilometer-long (4,000-mile) Northeast Passage leads from Asia, past Russia and Norway, and connects the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean. The slightly shorter Northwest Passage runs past Canada toward New York. Both routes cross the Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean. This is only possible if ice cover does not block the way.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Taking the long road

  To get from Rotterdam to Tokyo, ships currently pass India and go through the Suez Canal in Egypt. That’s about 6,000 kilometers longer than the route through the Northeast Passage. Ships travel to the US East Coast from Asia via the Pacific and through the Panama Canal. Here, too, taking the Northwest Passage cuts over 4,000 kilometers off the journey.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Arctic pioneers

  In 2009, the Bremen-based Beluga shipping company sent two German heavy-lift carriers through the Northeast Passage for the first time. Since then, shipping traffic in the region has increased. Still, Burkhard Lemper of the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics in Bremen says the Arctic Ocean is not (yet) heavily frequented — if only because the route is only open at certain times of year.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Open water

  No climate scientist can say for sure how global warming will progress around the North Pole. But, “Everyone agrees the Arctic will be ice-free within the next 30 to 50 years,” says sea-ice expert Christian Haas of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. Researchers describe the Arctic as ice-free when ice cover falls below 1 million square kilometers in summer.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Disturbing the peace

  Biologists fear for the unique wildlife in the Arctic as shipping traffic increases. Beluga whales, Greenland whales and walruses, for example, could be a risk, US researchers say in a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They studied 80 populations of marine mammals and found that more than half are resident along the Northeast or Northwest Passage.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Very special residents

  Scientists fear that narwhals in particular could suffer from shipping traffic in the Arctic Ocean. The marine mammals stay close to coastal pack ice. The males are easily recognizable by their helical tusk, which can become up to three meters long. This is a life-size replica in the Ozeanum Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund, Germany.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  Antarctica as a model

  Researchers and environmentalists are calling for guidelines on Arctic shipping. For example, ships should avoid the whales’ main hunting grounds, fit sailing schedules around their migration, and keep noise and speed in check. “This does not yet exist in the Arctic — that’s the big difference from Antarctica,” Greenpeace biologist Christian Bussau says.

• 10 years of shipping through the frozen north

  The calm before the storm?

  According to Greenpeace expert Bussau, only 50 ships pass through the Northeast and Northwest Passage each year. The German Shipowners’ Association says the figure is in the double-digit range. But Bussau says time is of the essence: “In the long run, there will be a lot going on in the Arctic.” So far, there are no environmental regulations for shipping in the region.

  Author: Brigitte Osterath (hf)

Visiting the Nunavut Research Institute (NRI) at Iqaluit Wednesday, Maas was told by lead scientist Mary Ellen Thomas that the disappearance of sea ice in the bay had deprived families of traditional transport routes and hunting grounds for fish and seals.

German ethnologist Torsten Diesel, at NRI for the past six years, said the sea ice cover had become increasingly “dangerous” because of strong currents and tides.

“One can drive over the ice in the morning, but by the afternoon an open water gap has emerged. Every year we lose hunters who venture onto the ice,” Diesel told German public Deutschlandfunk (DLF) radio.

No longer ‘theoretical discussion’

The location’s ice loss showed that climate change was “no theoretical discussion” and made clear what would happen “if we don’t change our behavior,” Maas said, referring to fossil fuel reductions promised by nations at the 2015 UN summit in Paris.

Professor Markus Rex, head of Atmospheric Physics at Germany’s Alfred Wegener polar and oceanic institute (AWI), said he often experienced Arctic visitors such as Maas transformed by encountering the changes firsthand.

“They come back [thinking] differently compared to when they set out.”

German ship to drift near pole

From next month, Rex will head a major winter expedition. The Polarstern (Polar Star), a German research ship, will drift across the Central Arctic by tying itself to a large ice flow for months through the winter dark.

“We’ll be north of the 80th parallel the entire time, and for much of it, we’ll even be in the direct vicinity of the North Pole,” Rex said.

Aside from Norway’s 19th century explorer Fridtjof Nansen, few had conducted an ice-drift winter analysis so far north in the “epicenter of global warming,” he added.

Norwegian researchers warned the Arctic Council in May that the North’s chilled stratified waters — vital for unique fish life — were already “shifting” to resemble mixed Atlantic waters because of temperature rises.

• Just wild weather or climate disruption?

  ‘Rossby waves’ unlock weather puzzle?

  “Breakthrough” insights into atmospheric dynamics are emerging from “high-maths” —scrutiny of satellite data, say scientists. Their Nature magazine article identifies “significant connections” between extreme rain events, often far apart. Their premise: global rainfall distribution stems “probably” from planetary waves named after the late Swedish-born American meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby.

• Just wild weather or climate disruption?

  Deluged in Townsville, Queensland

  Normally, monsoon rains over northern Queensland last a “few days,” says Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. Unprecedented downpours began a week ago, with more forecast and troops sent to a disaster zone. Evacuations have included these residents of Rossela, near Townsville, and German and Swiss tourists plucked from the Diamantina River catchment by a local farmer using his private helicopter.

• Just wild weather or climate disruption?

  Tasmania scorched, wildfires

  Wildfires have scorched swaths of Tasmania, offshore from continental Australia’s Victoria state, where residents last month faced a record heat wave. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) blames the trend partly on record-warm southern Tasman Sea temperatures that have blocked rain-bearing cold weather fronts. These flow normally west-to-east under Australia toward New Zealand.

• Just wild weather or climate disruption?

  Denuded California braces for Pacific storm

  Its hills denuded by recent drought-induced wildfires, California’s central coast braced Saturday for another Pacific storm, with heavy rainfalls forecast. Santa Barbara County ordered evacuations from areas still clogged by past fire debris. Avalanche warnings were in place on the Sierra Nevada, loaded with snow from storms in January.

• Just wild weather or climate disruption?

  Chicago thawing

  The US Midwest, including Chicago, is thawing after a sudden two-day arctic vortex chill. At least 18 people died. Normally, the icy air mass swirling over the darkened North Pole during the winter stays ringed by the polar jet stream at about 60 degrees north. Stream weakening was also behind the prolonged 2018 European summer drought, according to Potsdam’s PIK climate institute.

• Just wild weather or climate disruption?

  Monsoon rains, Indonesia

  Indonesia, like much of Asia, weathers annual monsoon rains. Last Tuesday, the Sulawesi islands counted its toll: at least 70 people were killed as rivers burst their banks and landslides buried village homes. Authorities said a state of emergency would remain in place until February 6.

  Author: Ian P. Johnson

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-s-maas-tours-canada-s-melting-arctic/a-50036234?maca=en-rss-en-ger-1023-xml-atom