'We packed long underwear and never wore it': Arctic scientists shocked at warming

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/13/arctic-melting-climate-change

 

Emily Holden in Washington
Fri 13 Nov 2020 04.15 EST


When the Arctic researchers Jacqueline Grebmeier and Lee Cooper made their annual scientific pilgrimage to frigid seas off Alaska last month, what they found was startling.

Areas that were previously accessible at that time of the year only with an ice-breaking ship had become open, wavy water.

“We packed our long underwear, and we never put it on,” Cooper said.

In years past, the pair could convince wary volunteers to accompany them by promising walrus sightings. But with no sea ice to perch on and fewer clams to eat, the tusked butterballs have moved to more comfortable accommodations on the beaches.

Instead, the research team saw huge fishing boats searching farther north for Pacific cod, and a container ship traveling a newly melted route from Quebec to Korea. It snowed only once during their three weeks on the water.
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While the world on average has warmed more than 1C because of human-caused climate change, the Arctic is heating much faster. The researchers found the shallow waters were up to 3C [5.4F} hotter than is typical throughout the water column. This year marked the second-biggest sea ice retreat toward the North Pole ever, after 2012.

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“It’s surprising that in my lifetime, particularly in the last five to eight years, how quickly things have changed,” Grebmeier said. “You can’t project like you used to.”

Grebmeier explained that the lack of sea ice was leading to higher levels of algal production – including the kind that can be deadly. Clams eat the toxic algae, and walruses, diving ducks and humans eat the clams. That’s also worrying because indigenous populations along the Alaska coast depend on clams for food.

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Cooper said the changes were particularly sad for indigenous communities that have been in Alaska for thousands of years and are now coping with unstable sea ice and trying to hunt animals that are moving.

“Not in our lifetimes is it going back to the way it was when we first started out working in Alaska in the late 1980s,” Cooper said.