July 29

Dispatch 11
THE ARCTIC: An Overview

Will Steger has been inspired to explore the Arctic by travelers who have gone before him.  Although the ancestors of the Inuit traveled the Arctic thousands of years ago, there is little written record of their journey.  The new search for sea routes to Asia, between the 1500s and the 1800s, only marked the map and did not significantly improve the understanding of the remote and icy Arctic region.

 It was not until 1893, when Fridtjof Nansen , a Norwegian explorer and scientist, sailed east from Norway, north of Siberia, and then directly north into the Arctic Ocean pack ice, that the Arctic Ocean was understood.  Nansen traveled in the "Fram," a walnut-shaped boat specially designed to freeze into, rather than be crushed by, the Arctic ice.  It drifted in the frozen ice for three years, moving with currents across the top of the world.  When the "Fram" finally broke out of the ice just north of Norway, Nansen returned to Norway and became a national hero.  He had proven his unique theory that the Arctic was a dynamic ocean covered by a thin layer of moving ice. 

What do these contemporary travelers face in the far reaches of the world?  The Arctic is an ocean more than one-and-a half times the size of the United States and up to two miles deep. There is a layer of ice about 8 to 10 feet thick which floats on the surface of this two-mile deep ocean.  The sea-ice moves constantly, driven by prevailing wind currents.  This drifting is what Will Steger recently experienced from his ice island near the North Pole.

Around the rim of the Arctic Ocean is the land of eight nations-Canada, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia and the United States (Alaska).  The North Pole itself  is the point where 24 time zones come together.  The region is home to a significant amount of wildlife; polar bears, Arctic foxes, Porcupine caribou, seals, musk-oxen and whales to name a few.

During winter, the sea-ice, which covers the Arctic Ocean, expands to reach the encircling land masses.  For a good part of the winter, the sun does not shine at all.  As the temperature warms in the spring, the offshore "pack ice" and "land fast ice" begin to break up, move with the currents of wind and water, and create strips of open water called leads.  When blocks of ice collide, they form walls of several miles long and up to 40 feet high.  Referred to as pressure ridges, these walls pose challenging obstacles for Arctic travelers.  The damp air in summer passes over the ice and the moisture condenses into fog and sheets of low, drizzling clouds, making summer Arctic seas some of the cloudiest places on earth.  On the land, the top 6 to 10 feet of the "permafrost" melts, creating boggy habitats for plants and waterfowl. 

An estimated 2 million people, speaking nearly 50 languages, live in the Arctic region.  Best known are the Inuit (Eskimo) of Alaska, Canada and Greenland; the Sami or "Reindeer People" of Scandinavia and western Russia; and the Yup'it and Nenets of northern Russia.  Over thousands of years, these peoples have each developed different and sophisticated strategies for living in one of the world's most extreme environments.

The image of the Arctic as a pristine and isolated region unsullied by the impact of industrial pollutants is mistaken.  In a phenomenon known as transboundary pollution, contaminants from around the world are carried north by rivers, ocean currents, and atmospheric circulation.  In the last 20 years, scientists have detected an increasing variety of toxic pollutants in the Arctic.  Transboundary pollution is particularly threatening in the Arctic because the region's extremely cold temperatures, long periods of reduced sunlight, and extensive ice cover prolong the lifespan of pollutants.  One dioxin, for example, breaks down within 8 months in warmer climates, but persists for 40 years in the Arctic.  Through a process known as bioaccumulation, such lengthened lifespans result in higher, more toxic concentrations of contaminants.  These concentrated pollutants are eventually released by seasonal melting and then absorbed by spring algae, eaten by zooplankton, and drawn into a continuously contaminated food web.