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September 18, 2013
Allison McCartney for PBS NewsHour Extra Glaciers in the Arctic are now melting at a faster pace than they were only a few years ago, damaging wildlife habitats and opening up potentially dangerous new shipping lanes.
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Allison McCartney for PBS
NewsHour
Extra
Glaciers in the Arctic are now melting at a faster pace than they
were only a few years ago, damaging wildlife habitats and opening up
potentially dangerous new shipping lanes.
“It’s a scary proposition that things are happening a lot faster
than we thought even a few years ago,” said James Overland, a scientist
with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who has
spent decades looking at Arctic Sea ice trends. “The real scary thing
that we’re focusing on now is, it’s not just the extent, but it’s the
thickness of the ice, and that’s been going down dramatically.”
The melting ice is opening up new paths for shipping, but at this
point ship captains have no way of knowing whether it’s safe to sail in
the open water the melting ice leaves behind. To identify safe and
perilous waters, a team of NOAA scientists based in Alaska is using
sonar to create charts of the new sea floor.
“I think the surface of Mars has been mapped better than our oceans
have been,” said Commander Rick Brennan, who captains the ship that
launched the NOAA scientists.
While Alaska’s congressional delegation in Washington asks for more
infrastructure and resources in the state, the Coast Guard this summer
built a temporary base near the Bering Strait to help manage the
traffic of ships that has more than doubled in the area since 2008.
This video from PBS
NewsHour Extra provides more information about this important
topic.
