North Pole melts away: Gulls circle overhead as Arctic ice cap gives way to lake a mile across

The Ottawa Citizen 
August 20, 2000
BYLINE: Jonathan Leake

The North Pole is melting for the first time in 55 million years. Researchers have found that the icecap at the top of the world has turned into a mile-wide patch of open ocean.

The melting of the pole last happened on such a scale when the Earth was going through a period of rapid warming. This year's meltdown has been linked to the greenhouse effect, in which gases released by burning fossil fuels are trapping ever more heat in the atmosphere and warming the Earth.

The melting was discovered by James McCarthy, an oceanographer and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC, which is sponsored by the United Nations to advise governments on global warming. It coincides with official confirmation that the icecap covering Greenland is also disappearing.

Earlier research conducted by Mr. McCarthy has shown that the average summer thickness of ice at the North Pole was about three metres.

This year, however, he was able to take a ship directly to the pole and then had to float over it because there was no ice to stand on.

''It was totally unexpected,'' said Mr. McCarthy, who is also director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Mr. McCarthy's ship, the Russian icebreaker Yamal, had to steam almost 10 kilometres away from the pole before it reached ice thick enough that passengers on the ship could disembark so they could claim to have stood near the pole, the New York Times reported yesterday.

They also saw gulls flying overhead, the first time ornithologists said they had ever been sighted at the pole, the Times reported.

Researchers had warned that the polar icecap was shrinking by about six per cent a year, but nobody had expected the North Pole to melt until global warming had become much more severe.

The Eocene period, 55 million years ago, was the last time the world's climate grew rapidly warmer. Fossil evidence shows that it became warm enough for tropical vegetation and animals to flourish in the Arctic and Antarctic circles.

The news comes as the panel on climate change is drafting an important report on global warming for release in January.

This weekend, it emerged that the report will, for the first time, confirm that the Greenland icecap has not only started to melt but also will eventually disappear unless global warming can be halted.

Sir John Houghton, former head of Britain's Meteorological Office and who now heads the IPCC's scientific panel, said the report will make it clear to governments that the world's climate is changing rapidly.

''We are confident that climate change is due to human activities,'' he said.

The news also anticipates the November reopening of negotiations in the Hague over ratifying the 1997 Kyoto climate-change agreement. Under the agreement, First World countries such as Canada, Great Britain and the United States have to reduce their greenhouse- gas emissions by between six per cent and eight per cent by 2012. Most of the countries are expected to fail.

Experts predict the U.S., the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, will actually increase emissions by 15 per cent.

There is also no agreement on reductions after 2012.

Tony Juniper, campaigns director for Friends of the Earth, said the melting of the North Pole shows how urgently action is needed.

''The melting polar ice is consistent with the predictions of scientists,'' he said. ''It shows global warming is for real and governments must agree to tougher pollution targets. ''

Peter Wadhams, a specialist at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, said it is wrong to say that the North Pole had never lost its ice.

''Polar ice is always moving and these gaps can open up anywhere, including the North Pole -- but it is true that there are now many more of them,'' he said.

''Our research shows the average thickness of the polar ice has reduced by 40 per cent and its area is shrinking by four per cent a year. By the end of this century, it will have disappeared completely.''

GRAPHIC

CP Color Photo: Malcolm C. McKenna, The New York Times / Oceanographer James McCarthy led a group of tourists on a cruise to the North Pole, only to find they couldn't stand at the spot because the ice had melted. Scientists say the thinning of the Earth's polar ice has been greatly accelerated in recent history because of humans.