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Dynagas Ltd via EPA
In this 2012 file photo, the liquefied natural gas carrier OB River moves through ice in the Arctic. A new study says melting ice there will open more routes to shipping.
By the middle of this century, thanks to climate change, anyone with a light icebreaker can spend their Septembers going anywhere they want in the Arctic Ocean, including straight over the North Pole, according to a new study.
Ordinary vessels, which account for more than 99 percent of shipping traffic, could easily navigate the Northern Sea Route along the Russian coastline and, in some years, even find a route through the fabled Northwest Passage.
"That’s kind of crazy and, frankly, a little bit worrisome," Laurence C. Smith, a geographer and sea ice expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, told NBC News. "It is not like these will be open blue seas and safe or open year round."
Nevertheless, the temptation is likely to prove irresistible to some shipping companies and adventurous tourists, which opens up new concerns about search and rescue infrastructure, the environmental impact from increased shipping traffic and the potential for oil spills, among other issues.
Smith and graduate student Scott Stephenson used the output of climate models to chart the fastest, most efficient, and realistic routes through the Arctic for different classes of ships that will become possible as more sea ice disappears each summer.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The fastest navigation routes for ships seeking to cross the Arctic Ocean by mid-century include the Northwest Passage (on the left) and over the North Pole (center), in addition to the Northern Sea Route (on the right).
New shipping routes through the Arctic can shave weeks off voyages between Europe and Asia and are often discussed as an upside to global warming. Most of the attention has focused on the Northern Sea Route, which is controlled by the Russians and requires expensive sea escorts to use.
The new findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate shipping companies willing to invest in light icebreaker technology, known as Polar Class 6 vessels, can avoid those fees by going over the North Pole or through the Northwest Passage.
Regular ships, too, will be able to navigate at least some of these routes unescorted. And, "it doesn’t matter whether we get serious about curbing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions or not," Smith said. "Either way, the result is the same. The ice will thin sufficiently."
But just because the routes are opening up, doesn’t necessarily mean shipping companies will race to take advantage, according to Lawson Brigham, a professor of geography and Arctic policy at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
He said the most likely users of the expanded shipping access are bulk cargo carriers hauling commodities such as oil and gas and hard minerals including nickel and zinc — the type of ships already plying the Russian coastline.
"It is the connection of natural resources to global markets that today and in the future is driving (Arctic) marine traffic," Brigham, who chaired the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment for the Arctic Council, told NBC News.
Container ships of the sort that haul flat-screen TVs, iPhones, and IKEA furniture from factories in China to the U.S. and Europe are less likely to ply the new routes given the vagaries of ice and weather, which can wreak havoc on travel times for ships that must meet tight delivery schedules.
"It is possible" container ships would take the Northern Sea Route, Brigham said, "but the economics haven’t been worked out yet."
In addition to the economics of shipping, there are a host of development and political considerations the opening of these routes bring to the fore, according to Smith.
To start, there’s little infrastructure in place for search and rescue in the Arctic. Then there’re issues about whether the Northwest Passage is an international strait, as the U.S. maintains, or falls under Canada’s sovereignty as an internal domestic waterway.
"At the moment, the U.S. and Canada have a tacit agree-to-disagree policy on this because it doesn’t matter," Smith said. "But it could. The study suggests this needs to be resolved."
What’s more, the U.S. has yet to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty that establishes international laws to govern the maritime rights of countries. If signed, the U.S. could claim sovereignty over some of the newly opened shipping lanes.
As these issues are sorted out – and Brigham said this study should help apply pressure to do so – increased access to shipping will almost certainly increase natural resource extraction in the Arctic.
"Whether the open access and greater shipping is a benefit to the world is an open book," he said. "We are going to produce even more oil and gas and carry it to the world and just enhance the (greenhouse gas) emissions. But the coastal states, all of us, want to develop our oil and gas."
John Roach is a contributing writer to NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website.
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Wow! So many big changes in our world and so many important decisions that need to be made among many nations.
... and the U.S. Congress can't even agree on changes to tax loopholes and entitlement cuts, even though they all agree the cuts have to be made.
What are the chances we're going to be ready to talk about changing Arctic sea routes and come up with a strategy that protects the U.S. economy when this happens?
My guess is: Zip, Zero!
Ok.. I am confused here. Why is having shorter, faster, less fuel consuming shipping lanes a bad thing?
OH.. Right.... Because that might make the cost of goods lower so people would start to think that global warming isn't such a bad thing. We can't have people coming to the conclusion that ADAPTATION to the change might result in higher standards of living due to lower costs of delivery of goods. Noooo,, Can't let that happen.. We must keep the focus on the only the "bad" things so we can continue to push for a one world Marx inspired government to manage the allocation of the ever smaller amount of goods that will be available because industry has been hobbled by "carbon taxes" and people have been impoverished by "energy conservation" requirements that deprive them of transportation means to travel more than 5 miles to get to a job or buy food or other goods.
The great palaces and Cathedrals in Europe were build during the last warm-up when the farmers were able to grow two crops a year instaed of one thus allow a lot of other people to become skilled stone masons and builders instead of spending all their time farming every little patch of ground and trying to preserve what they grew to be able to survive the long, cold winters.
China built the Great wall in the mountains during the warm period and in the deserts during the cool periods.
The timing seems to say that the great pyramids in Egypt were built during a cool period.
What is clear from written history and archaeological evidence is that during the last 12,000 years the earth has heated up and cooled off at least 6 times. Humanity adapted and survived. Surely with global communications and weather reporting, we as a species can do an even better job of adapting and surviving than we did in the past.
Yes becasue a Hurricane Sandy hitting every year would help push up those good old standards of Greed errr living.
The heating has never been so high nor so rapid.
During the renaissance the average temp. in Europe was higher than it is today, same for Iceland, Greenland and Vineland. The vikings explored east and west and settled in areas that are now too cold but could back then due to the warmer climate. Europe flourished under the warmer temps-I'm sure if you look at what was happening in Asia and Africa you'd have seen similar flourishing civilizations, probably the same in South America. Global warming is neither good nor bad, it's just change...or as they say around here...it's the weather. That scientists insist the sky is falling, pleeeeeeeeease! I've been follwowing the Global Cooling-Gobal Warming debate for over 50 years. These guys can't accurately predict this weeks weather and no your telling me they can predict what it will be like in a hundred years? If ya believe that I have some beach front property in Arizona ya might want to buy.
If you fall overboard, you might come up under some ice. That would suck big time.
Captain, you say you have been following the global warming debate for 50 years, and yet you still don't understand the difference between climate and weather. LOL
Aside from jock's point, CHANGE is bad. That's the whole problem. As you have correctly pointed out, average temperatures have been even higher than the worst projections of global warming.
The problem isn't the absolute highs or absolute lows, the problem is the speed with which records are being broken year after year. The reason why we have mass species extinction is because climate change is happening too fast for species to adapt.
If you spread the same level of change out over time, species would have time to adapt. Naturally.
It's a lot easier now than it was for those featured in Farley Mowat's "Top of the World" triligy.
Captain, you need to speak in terms even a dumb jock could understand. You are obviously over his head. He believes every sky is falling prediction and claim the Climate Pseudo-scientists ever made without any questions asked.
I'm a scientist. I guarantee I understand this better than you do. Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you must be stupid, is the last refuge of a fool.
I will go with Nobel Prize winning scientist Ivar Giaever over a zealot and dumb jock that constantly and falsely claims anyone disagreeing with him does not understand "the science".
“Is climate change pseudoscience? If I’m going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely.” - Ivar Giaever
You can no longer hide behind your fake consensus jock!
Ivar Giaever is NOT a climate scientist.
He continues to cite various climate myths e.g. "nobody thinks about the effect of deforestation or urban heat islands on climate" (However, there's tons of research from the IPCC and lots of public presentations on this topic, including by other Nobel winning scientists - certainly not nobody).
This is not his area. He doesn't know everything that's going on in this field, but he loves spewing hyperbole. Sadly for him, he is picking on things that are trivially disprovable.
You can't just be smart - you also have to be an unbiased expert in a field. I will admit to you that I think Kenneth Lay & Jeffrey Skilling were both very smart. And I certainly don't want THEM to decide our energy future! (Well, just Skilling of course...). Similarly I also don't want Michael Moore to decide gun policy.
You need to listen to the right people - not just the most vocal ones.
Of course, there is also the possibility that you're not listening to anybody. You've already made up your mind, and you're desperately trying to point to the first person you can find on Wikipedia that somehow seems to agree with whatever distorted and unalterable preconceived notion it is that you already have. Can that be...? No, certainly not... because people never do that!
He is not a climate Pseudo-scientist, but he is a scientist and understands quite well the scientific method. And climate science does not measure up against well established scientific methods.
You don't have to be a meteorologist to know which way the wind blows.
Yes, he understands the scientific method, but he's not applying it. He's not bringing original research to the table. He's not pointing out factual errors in interpretation of data. He's not even raising new theories that need to be proven.
He's simply googling existing climate myths and repeating it. And now we have to believe him just cause he's a smart guy... NOT.
Giaever: "Water vapor is a much much stronger green[house] gas than the CO2. If you look out of the window you see the sky, you see the clouds, and you don't see the CO2."
You mean to tell me you can see a visible gas, but not an invisible one? And therefore the invisible gas doesn't exist? Gasp! Ok, I guess that put me in my place.
Not even the worse Fox News skeptic denies that CO2 levels exist and are rising (at least over the last 50 years), since why would you attack something that's so easily provable? Skeptics just don't see it as a cause or concern for global warming. Giaever is completely off in his own la-la-land world here.
It's funny watching the know-nothings oscillate between "it's not happening!" and "it's happening, but it's great!"
Back in the real world, even if carbon emissions are curtailed it looks like the arctic ice cap is destined to open up during the warm months in short order, so we had better prepare for the new global shipping order.
Here is what NASA has to say about climate change. You know who they are don't you. They are the people that do rocket science but I guess you deniers are going to say you know more than they do. Jan. 15, 2013: NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis Tuesday that compares temperatures around the globe in 2012 to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago.
This color-coded map displays a progression of changing global surface temperatures anomalies from 1880 through 2012. The final frame represents global temperature anomalies averaged from 2008 through 2012.More movies
The average temperature in 2012 was about 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 Celsius), which is 1.0 F (0.6 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F (0.8 C) since 1880, according to the new analysis.
Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperature from year to year, but the continued increase in greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere assures a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade.
"What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason it's warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
Ah yes NASA. Glad you brought that up. There have been a few decent scientists at NASA. But James Hansen is a complete nut job! You should read a little of what Oliver K. Manuel, Former NASA Principal has to say about NASA and the gorebull warming nonsense. It isn't pretty!
Chicken, we can fight and insult and play little self-righteous games all we want. You can cherry-pick your tame climate "scientist" deniers and ignore every major science academy on the planet. But in the end, the climate will still warm, the human role will be accepted, and the hard-core deniers such as yourself will change your screen name and pick something new on their agenda to deny. It is too bad that we will have lost so many opportunities in the meantime, but I am content to be on the right side of science and history.
Your right jock, you can insult me and any scientist that disagrees with your dogma by calling me & them deniers. You have to insult and discredit me and them because you know your so called science is on such shaky ground and looking less scientific everyday.
We will see in the long run about that science and history part. Your side of the argument likes to make many predictions about the future that are looking more and more foolish.
like this one:
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".
"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.
Davud Viner is David Viner, not "my side." Who knows what prompted him to exaggerate to a reporter. It doesn't change the fact that the climate will warm.
I don't have to discredit you. I can wait for time and science to do that just fine.
I have come to the conclusion that we all have a little blame global warming and its consequences and guilt even more politicians who do not slow down.