Sailors had often looked for an alternate and short passage from Europe to Asia and Global warming seems to have made that possible for them. With warming temperatures the ice-bound sea of the arctic is melting, paving the way for the Northwest Passage to becoming navigable, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
What will follow suit? Economic and resource development in the North will lure commercial vessels to use the route as early as next year. The rapid degradation of the ice cover has been a key factor in the growing interest among and friction between Russia, Canada, the U.S. and other northern nations in securing seabed territory, resource claims and shipping rights in the Arctic.
Race for resources in the arctic
On Aug. 2, a Russian mini-sub planted a flag at the North Pole seabed as part of a controversial bid to prove that Russia’s continental shelf extends far from the Siberian coast and encompasses the potentially lucrative oil reserves of the high Arctic seafloor.
Days later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper reasserted Canadian sovereignty in the North during a high-profile Arctic tour that added a $100-million deep-water seaport on Baffin Island and a new military training centre at Resolute Bay to a previous $3-billion promise of at least six new Arctic patrol ships.
U.S. President George W. Bush said during his visit to Canada last week that “we believe it’s an international passage… We’ll manage the differences, because there are differences on the Northwest Passage.”
The record melting of the passage comes two weeks after the NSIDC and two other ice-monitoring agencies in the U.S. and Japan declared that the Arctic Ocean ice cover has shrunk to its smallest size since regular satellite imaging of the polar cap began in 1979. This is yet another proof that climate change is underway, ice is melting and the oceans are rising. At this rate the entire polar region, including the North Pole, could witness a total summer melt by 2030.
The passage a source of a longtime sovereignty debate between Canada and the U.S., The tension highlighted in 1985 by the unauthorized transit of the U.S. icebreaker Polar Sea. The waterway saves about 4,000 nautical miles on a voyage from northern Europe to Asia. U.S. and Canadian officials have confirmed the passage is almost completely clear this summer and the region is open more than it has since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972.
The Arctic is one of Earth’s most inaccessible areas, so obtaining measurements of sea ice was difficult before the advent of satellites. For more than 20 years, ESA has been providing satellite data to the cryosphere communities. Currently, ESA is contributing to the International Polar Year (IPY) a large worldwide science programme focused on the Arctic and Antarctic.
Apart from being sad news from the environmentalist point of view, this also bodes bad news for Panama, which is spending billions of dollars to widen and deepen its famous panama canal for those same ships.
