Melting Arctic could make ship travel possible

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers could become an open shipping lane.

The European Space Agency said that together, 200 satellite photos taken this month showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since images were first taken in 1978.

The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels already has opened up a slim summer window for ships.

Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said that for now, the opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.

“A stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions,” he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening and polar ice continues melting, it will take years for such routes to be ice-free and regular year-round, he said. “The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes.”

Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Center said Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles in 2005. “The strong reduction … certainly raises flags that the ice [in summer] may disappear much sooner than expected,” he said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday. Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected - but ESA did not say when that might be and efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful yesterday.

A UN panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.

Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.

Associated Press