Arctic Ice Melt Research Articles

The geopolitics of Arctic melt

The rapidity of Arctic melt is no longer the phantasmagoria of B-grade movies, such as the ‘Day after tomorrow’, but is occurring at a rate unimaginable just a few years ago. In 2007, more than one million square miles of ice melted, leaving the region with only half the ice that existed in 1950. The Arctic has been propelled into the centre of geopolitics as global climate change has transformed the region into a maelstrom of competing commercial, national security and environmental concerns with profound implications for the international legal and political system. The prospect of longer ice-free periods in the Arctic has momentous implications for the region's commercial development, in itself a further risk to melting Arctic ice. This article argues that Arctic melt does and will continue to pose economic, military and environmental challenges to the governance of the region and explores the role of technological factors as both a barrier and an enabler of access. Working within existing institutions and building capacity is preferable to the proliferation of new institutions, although the full structure and scope of the legal and regulatory frameworks that may be needed are, at present, unclear. But what is clear, is that Arctic melt is on the increase.

Canadian Sovereignty Linked to Energy Development in the Arctic

on explorationand probable development of Canada’s Arctic energyresources. The price of natural gas has recovered fromits recent lows and is now on the upswing, with no end insight. With conventional natural gas production already indecline in the mature Western Canada Sedimentary Basin,no one can predict when and where the price of gas willstabilize. Oil has long passed the $100 psychologicalbarrier and currently sells at nearly $140 a barrel, gettingever closer, in absolute dollars, to levels not reached sincethe oil shocks of the 1970s. The world’s largest oilfieldsare in decline, starting with Saudi Arabia’s mammothGhawar field, one of many giant oil pools from Mexico,Russia, and the Middle East discovered during the heydayof hydrocarbon exploration in the 1960s and 1970s. Con-ventional supplies are declining as China and India growat breakneck pace, and our American neighbour shows nosign of losing its thirst for energy, although the ongoingwoes of the U.S. economy are likely to reduce energyconsumption in the short term.Against this backdrop, only remote frontier areas suchas the Canadian Arctic offer any hope for large newconventional discoveries. The North American Arctic isclearly in the cross hairs of the industry, and it is only amatter of time before the starting gun of a new era ofenergy exploration in the Far North is heard in corporateoffices. While supply, demand, and the price of commodi-ties will loom large in the mind of industry decisionmakers the day they decide to go North, many other factorswill also have to be examined before industry commitsbillions of dollars in capital investment to go after Arcticresources. One of the least worrisome aspects of Arcticenergy development is probably the resource itself. Largegas discoveries were made during the first round of explo-ration three decades ago. There is enough gas in the threelarge fields of the Mackenzie Delta—Taglu, Niglintgak,and Parsons Lake—to feed the yet elusive MackenzieValley pipeline for at least 20 years. Huge quantities of gaswere also found in the Arctic Islands, and a number ofstudies suggest that shipping this gas to market is indeedpossible. While oil was the prime reason for the earlyround of exploration, the paucity of sizeable oil discover-ies from these initial efforts was disappointing. However,Devon Canada’s discovery of 250 million barrels beneaththe Beaufort Sea in 2006 and Imperial Oil and ExxonMobil Canada’s massive $585 million bid for a hugeoffshore block in 2007 signaled that the Arctic oil flamemay have been rekindled. Confirmation came in June ofthis year with British Petroleum’s record-breaking $1.2billion bid for offshore land dispositions in the BeaufortSea adjacent to the Imperial-Exxon-Mobil acquisitions.Companies are now preparing for the move northward.These include ConocoPhillips Canada and Chevron Canada,which acquired some offshore land dispositions in 2007and 2008. Petro-Canada is also a key player, as it ownslarge portions of the Significant Discovery Licenses in theArctic Islands. However, beyond finding the resources inthe ground, above or below the sea, companies still face aseemingly endless list of challenges: a regulatory processviewed as overly complicated and in the thrall of too manyinterests, an environment that is harsh and unforgiving,political ramifications that seem far more complicatedthan they used to be, and a warming climate that is playinghavoc with infrastructures. On that front, and converselyto the popular belief that the melting of Arctic ice due toglobal warming will be a boon for exploration, there ismuch uncertainty about the extent to which a warmingArctic environment will add significant cost to the alreadyhefty bill for conducting exploration in the Far North. Still,the challenges may not be insurmountable when comparedto those posed by the earth’s few other remaining areaswith substantial hydrocarbon potential. These are oftenwar-torn countries, forsaken by democracy, where corrup-tion and terrorism rule the day. In the end, the regulatoryproblems in the North may be insignificant when com-pared to dealing with warlords or with governments will-ing to renege on sealed deals and signed contracts. Goingafter the few giant conventional hydrocarbon fields left tobe discovered will be costly and risky.These current and anticipated developments are inter-twined with, and are bound to exacerbate, the issue ofCanadian Arctic sovereignty, one of the most emotionallycharged and misunderstood issues surrounding the Cana-dian North. Arctic sovereignty is truly about control. Noone challenges Canada’s control over its Arctic lands. Theone minor exception is the ownership of Hans Island, a tiny

Consequences of the 2008 US Elections for America's Climate Change Policy, Canada, and the World

On 28 June 1979, at the group of seven summit, the leaders of the world's most powerful countries declared: We need to expand alternative sources of energy, especially those which help to prevent further pollution, particularly increases of carbon dioxide and sulfur oxides the They thus acknowledged the need to halt immediately, at 1979 levels, the concentration of carbon dioxide the atmosphere. In the following five years, they and their developed country partners moved this direction, as their CO2 emissions steadily declined.1 The G7 consensus came at the initiative of America's Democratic President Jimmy Carter, supported by Canada's Joe Clark. This far-reaching consensus was driven part by oil shortages, prices rising to historic highs, and economic growth falling to new lows.Eighteen years later, on 25 July 1997, the US senate passed the ByrdHagel resolution by 95 to 0. It stated that the senate not ratify any treaty signed at by Democratic President Bill Clinton and his vicepresident, Al Gore, if it impose binding limits on the industrialized countries but not on developing countries within the same compliance period and if it would result serious economic harm to the economy of the United States. At the time, the price of oil was close to historic lows and American economic growth was high.This is the range of choice America's international climate change policy under Democratic presidents and their congress. Whether President Barack Obama's policy will be more like Carter's or Clinton's matters much for Canada. In the Conservative party's 2006 platform, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised to attack climate change in concert with the major industrial nations the He chose climate change as a priority for the G 8 summit Hunts ville, Ontario, June 2010 - the first following the likely death ofthe regime, and the first opportunity for global leaders to replace it with an effective one. In the autumn 2008 election campaign Harper again displayed his internationally oriented cooperative approach, promising to deal with climate change through a cap-and-trade system embracing Canada, the United States, and Mexico, hitherto unconstrained by the regime.As president, Obama will probably say yes to Canada and seek to create an effective climate change regime for North America. For the first time it will bind Canada, the US, and Mexico to control their carbon emissions and do more for the global ecology than they could on their own. Obama is driven by his campaign promise to move aggressively on climate change and to make the NAFTA regime do more for the environment. He has reaffirmed his commitments and appointed many climate-committed architects of the initial NAFTA trade-environment regime as senior members of his team. Obama's choice of a cap-and-trade system as the centrepiece of his climate plan and his impressive popularity Canada will make it easy for Harper to achieve a far-reaching regional deal. This rapid start on an effective regional regime could form the basis of a global beyond Kyoto framework.THE POLICY ISSUESThe coming together of Obama's America and Harper's Canada on climate change matters much for the world. Uncontrolled climate change could jeopardize human life on the planet and there is no time to lose. In developed countries, the clearest effects of climate change are sporadic heat waves, forest fires, hurricanes, and, soon, chronic sea-level rise. For Americans, hurricanes Rita and Katrina were a wakeup call for what could come. For Canadians, melting Arctic ice has less shocking but still significant effects.The key international policy choices to control carbon time to stop deadly climate change are fivefold. First, the new regime have to bind all the major carbon-producing powers of the future. That include, notably, the G8, all the European Union, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and perhaps the rest of the group of 20. …

Climate transformation: the next revolution in public health?

Commentary on Hanlon, P. and Carlisle, S.: Do we face a third revolution in human history? If so how will public health respond? Journal of Public Health 2008, vol. 30. Is climate change driving the human species into the vortex of a third global revolution on the scale of the agricultural and industrial revolutions? If this is the case—what will be the implications for human health and wellbeing and for the discipline and profession of public health? These are the key questions raised in this provocative and timely article. The transformational periods of human civilization have, as the authors rightly suggest, been marked by the convergence of complex demographic, technologic, economic, political and ecological drivers and crises. In many cases the resulting challenges have triggered adaptive social and economic innovation. Public health concerns, understandings and interventions have often played a key role in these processes. There are, of course, also numerous salutary examples of failed adaptation and societal collapse. The first point to note about the population health challenges of the early 21st century is the extent to which they are globalized and interconnected. Although global flows of trade, finance, information and migration continue to be contested and uneven, the dominant trend is towards a world in which no civilization can be an island. No society can make itself fully immune from the spread of disease, financial speculation, political violence or changing weather patterns. The tension between globalizing interconnectedness and resurgent support for diverse cultural religious and political identities and values gives rise to a second key challenge for population health. Hanlon and Carlisle speculate that ‘we could see a re-prioritization of society towards values which promote wellbeing, health and equity, whilst reducing inequalities and over-consumption’. If so, how should we understand and measure progress, health and wellbeing? As the OECDSecretary General, Angel Gurria recently noted ‘if we agree that progress encompasses many elements, we also have to agree that its measurement cannot be reduced to growth in GDP per capita . . . it is time to call for a global effort to find better measurements of progress that will consider the multidimensional features of societal wellbeing.’ Or, as the recently elected Prime Minister of Bhutan, Jigmi Thinley reminds us, ‘we have to think of human wellbeing in broader terms. Material wellbeing is only one component. That doesn’t ensure that you’re at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other.’ The third and greatest population health challenge is climate change. The rapidity of the Arctic ice melt is now showing us ever more clearly what the climate modelers have been warning: the speed and extent of climate change is likely to be at the most serious end of the predicted range. There is also now increasing understanding that the health implications of climate change extend well beyond the effects of extreme weather events, heat waves and vector born diseases. A hotter and more volatile climate combined with the actions needed to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to rapidly changing ecologies will have important consequences for the full range of social, economic and environmental determinants of physical and mental health. Public health researchers, policy makers and practitioners have the capacity and the responsibility to play a crucial role in shaping public debate about climate change. As Hanlon and Carlisle rightly note, this responsibility extends beyond identifying specific epidemiological consequences and technical fixes to broader questions about ‘the new social structures, cultures and psychologies’, needed to envisage and

Satellite monitoring of forest fires and associated smoke plumes occurring in Korea

Operational research was carried out on satellite detection of forest fires and associated smoke plumes occurring in the Korean Peninsula. Forest fire data and satellite images obtained from 2004 to 2007 were examined. It was observed that at least three forest-fire episodes were caused by atmospheric lightning, while all other cases were recorded as anthropogenic causes, according to data gathered from the Korean meteorological and forestry services. For two episodes, there were 60~120 forest fires in North and South Korea, observations based on hotspots analysis. Smoke plumes transported over 1,200 km were observed. There was discussion of the role played by the emission of heated air and greenhouse gases in general warming and climate change in regional and global atmospheres, e.g., Arctic ice melting. With global warming, ice over the Arctic Ocean is melting significantly in summer (Chung and Le, Int J Remote Sens 25(2):front cover and 291–296, 2004). The suppression of forest fires caused by human activities is suggested to improve the atmospheric environment and to prevent climate change in the near future.

Blue ecology and climate change

Building on the concept of “Blue Ecology” introduced in previous BC Journal of Ecosystems and Management articles, the author proposes that we re-examine climate change from this “water first” angle: What is happening to the world's water in the context of climate change? As evidenced by higher temperatures resulting in melting Arctic ice, melting permafrost, freshwater (i.e., cold meltwater) influx into oceans, shifting water currents, drought, water stress, higher rainfall, and floods, the rhythm of water's transformations between solid, liquid, and gaseous states on our planet is undergoing a significant change, and at a significant rate. The author sees as essential the acknowledgement of water's central functional and spiritual roles in our world, and urges us to apply both respect and science-based understanding as we develop collaborative climate change mitigation strategies and instill this respect and understanding in younger generations.

Forest fires “are speeding up Arctic ice melt”

Forest fires “are speeding up Arctic ice melt”

New studies raise global warming fears

Gradual increases in global temperature may not lead to gradual changes in climate. Nigel Williams reports on new studies that suggest previous climate changes could have been more dramatic and polar environments may be particularly at risk.