Ocean for early September 2007, clearly showing the most direct route of the Northwest Pssage open (orange line) and the Northeast passage only partially blocked (blue line). The dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas, while green represents areas with sea ice. (ESA)

***********************************************************************

Arctic sea ice at record low

By Jamey Keaten

The Associated Press

Article Last Updated: 09/15/2007 11:38:19 AM MDT--http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6904873

Paris — Arctic ice coverage has receded this week to record lows, the European Space Agency said, raising the prospect of greater maritime traffic through a long-sought waterway known as the Northwest Passage.

Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack — sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said.

Satellite images this week showed Arctic ice cover fell to the lowest level since scientists started collecting such information in 1978, according to a statement on Paris-based ESA's Web site Saturday. Many experts believe that global warming is to blame for melting the passage. The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia compared with the current routes through the Panama Canal.

Ice has retreated to about 1 million square miles, Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said in the statement. ESA said the previous low was 1.5 million square miles, back in 2005.

Ice levels in the Arctic ebb and flow with the seasons, allowing for intermittent traffic between Europe and Asia across northern Canada — a route explorers and traders have long dreamt could open fully.

Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.

Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected — but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful.

With ice levels shrinking, some countries — including the United States and Canada — have jockeyed for claims over the passage, also a potentially oil-region region under the North Pole from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago.

Claes Ragner, a researcher with Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works with environmental and political issues over the Arctic, said the opening has symbolic meaning for sea transport.

"Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said by telephone.

But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be practicable, according to Ragner.

"It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all year," he said. "The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes." "Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route, but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there," Ragner added.

Arctic sea ice naturally extends its surface coverage each winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and recedes each summer, ESA said, but the overall loss has increased since satellite records were begun in 1978.

The opening this week was not the most direct waterway, ESA said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia, which remains partially blocked.

——— Associated Press Writer Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.