Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
‘Not enough ice to make a margarita’
Scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Khromov spent the weekend collecting samples of water, sealife and ocean-floor mud at a spot in the western Arctic Ocean that in most years would be covered with sea ice.
The ship, carrying researchers for the six-week RUSALCA expedition, was in its most northerly planned sampling stop, or “station,” a location nearly 350 miles (563 km) northwest of Barrow, Alaska. During the mission’s last cruise in 2004, the most northerly accessible location was 345 miles (555 km) south of the weekend’s station.
Mission coordinator Kevin Wood, of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, writes from the ship that the water is open on all sides. “There isn’t enough ice here to make a margarita,” Wood said.
The joint U.S.-Russian expedition is carrying out research to gauge the effects of global warming on the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea through the end of the month.
The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported last week that the Arctic’s sea ice thawed to its third smallest on record. This is up slightly from from the last two years, but continues an overall decline that is symptomatic of climate change. The smallest summer ice pack on record was in 2007.
Dredging the sea floor, researchers scooped up small tube-like organisms that resemble plastic cocktail stirs. So far, they have yet to be identified, Wood said.
The Khromov is preparing now to steam another 46 miles (74 km) to where radar images show the ice edge to be.
Fishing for information, Part II
The last of the data-gathering moorings to be plucked from the Bering Sea proved to be the most troublesome.
This one was several miles north of the Bering Strait in U.S. waters, and it took a few hours to steam up there in the Professor Khromov, the ship the RUSALCA team is using for the joint U.S.-Russian oceanographic expedition.
Once GPS pinpointed the location, the tech team in charge of retrieving the moorings sent the electronic signal that releases the chain of instruments and floats from the anchor on the ocean floor and waited. And waited. All on deck scanned around the ship for an orange ball on the water’s surface. It didn’t appear.
More beeps. Again, nothing.
After about 30 minutes, the mission’s chief scientist, Terry Whitledge, and Rebecca Woodgate, who is responsible for the mooring operations, put Plan B into action.
The high-tech gear, which has been gathering data on water content, temperature and other things 50 meters below the surface since last October, can’t just be left behind. It is key to the expedition’s mission of gauging the impact of global warming in the region.
This kind of trouble has been known to happen in the Arctic.
JM, it is you who are engaging in jibberish. Trends in everything from unemployment to shopping habits are looked at over time. This gives those analyzing data an indication where things are heading(less/more;bad/better) The same is true for climate data.This is why averaging is used year to year decade to decade and so on. Look at how the stock markets move through the day or by the week. While there is up and down movement ultimately there is a trend that can be identified.
Perhaps if you were to indulge yourself by reading up a little on the “Eocene Epoch” or the “Permian Extinction”, you might find some alarming similarities to our present situation. In fact global warming is progressing with unprecedented speed. You obviously have a computer, why don’t you check out Wikipedia and the external links to universities doing the research? Don’t take my word for it.