On Top of the World

by kieran mulvaney | June 30, 2009

This is the scene that confronted my colleagues on board the Arctic Sunrise on Monday.

  

Even an icebreaker has limits; for now at least, this is as far north as the Sunrise is going. The vast expanse of sea ice ahead of it stretches 445 miles to the North Pole; the open water behind it is the Nares Strait. Thing is, at this time of year, the Nares Strait shouldn't be open water at all.

When first we conceived of this expedition, we estimated our chances of even being able to enter the Nares Strait, let alone proceed far to the north, as no better than 50/50.

Under normal circustances, an "ice bridge" of old ice toward the south end of the strait holds the sea ice to its north in place. That bridge normally breaks in July, allowing the ice to its north to flow out into Baffin Bay, gradually opening up the waterway to navigation. Not for long, however: in mid-to-late August a second ice bridge, at Robeson Channel at the strait's north end, breaks. This allows old multi-year ice from the Arctic Ocean to flow into Nares Strait, making navigation once more difficult and ultimately all but impossible.

This year, however, was different. For the first time in 32 years of records, the sea ice in Nares Strait never truly "consolidated" over the winter and the southerly sea bridge didn't form. By the time the Arctic Sunrise reached Greenland, sea ice cover in much of Nares Strait was 90 percent below average.

That made life easy for the Sunrise and its (thus far) under-employed ice pilot, Arne Sorensen; but the expanse of (relatively) warm water also poses a potential problem, in that it threatens to cause the Robeson Channel ice bridge to break far earlier in the season than expected - perhaps even in the next couple of weeks.

So after the ship had arrived at its destination, the Petermann Glacier, and the lead on-board scientist Jason Box had installed time-lapse cameras to capture the glacier's anticipated break-up, the Sunrise headed sixty miles north to check out the ice bridge. Sorenson and Box investigated the barrier from the helicopter, and pronounced it to be sufficiently sturdy that the ship could start work without imminent fear of being swamped by a deluge of ice floes.

Before they did so, almost as soon as the ship had arrived at the ice, in fact, the crew was thrilled by the sight of the furry visitor pictured above, who investigated them closely for 20 minutes before ambling off. The elation on the ship traveled, via Iridium, to my cellphone as I sat at my kitchen table in northern Virginia.

Much work, and a long journey, lies ahead. But after three long, hard months of preparation and anticipation, on this one day at least, those involved in the expedition - from Amsterdam to Alexandria, and high in the Arctic - could smile and relax.   - Kieran Mulvaney

Photographs: Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace