Canadian Arctic Inuit Trying To Keep Pace With Ice Changes - Breakups Now Come Even In February

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Ice that seems a safe bet on a cold day is suddenly high-risk when a wicked wind comes out of nowhere, or sea currents eat away at the ice pack unseen. A hunter can find himself stranded on a drifting ice floe, surrounded by open sea.

In early February, normally the coldest month on the west coast of Victoria Island, open sea lapped up against the floe edge about 8 km off Ulukhaktok's shore. A blinding storm that shook the hamlet for days sent tremors rippling through kilometres of ice. By the time the gale subsided, the gash had opened up into a gaping wound of black water, stretching as far as the eye could see. The floe edge had eroded to just 2 km from shore.

A study published by NASA in 2008 found that once-rare winter breakups have become all too common as Arctic seas warmed up over the half-century from 1950 to 2006. Rising ocean temperatures have pushed the storm tracks that cyclones once commonly followed in the Atlantic and Pacific northward to the Arctic, NASA reported. Powerful winds blowing across the ice pack shatter it, move the floes for many kilometres and stir warm and cold layers of the sea. That could help the open water absorb more of the carbon dioxide blamed for global warming, NASA scientists speculated. But the effect of more storms and changing Arctic currents are just two of the many mysteries of climate change.

Below the tree line, as heavy snow piled up across large parts of North America and Europe this winter, so did global warming skepticism. Yet above the Arctic Circle, in what should be one of the coldest places on Earth, there is little doubt the climate is getting hotter.

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http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/779845--victoria-island-where-warming-means-danger