Scientists to probe polar sea conditions

DWANE WILKIN

A team of mostly American scientists will spend a year drifting on the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean this spring, probing the polar sea for clues about global warming.

About 30 researchers, along with various support people and equipment, are to be deposited on a floating research station in the middle of the Beaufort Sea next April to conduct the longest-ever continuous study of polar sea conditions.

The University of Washington in Seattle is sponsoring the project, dubbed Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA), and is currently reviewing a number of multi-million dollar bids to manage the logistics, including one from Inuvialuit Projects Inc., a subsidiary of the Inuvialuit Development Corporation.

With funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the university plans to gather a wide range of scientific data from one of the world’s harshest and most sensitive ecologies for input into existing models of climate change.

“It’s our understanding that they’ve never been able to collect a whole year’s data before,” says Gary Kozak, Inuvialuit Projects’ general manager.

New info about global warming

The scientific team will spend 14 months monitoring the relationship between surface and atmospheric temperatures and changing ice and sea conditions.

Data collected over the course of the year will be used to develop more accurate scientific models for predicting climate change in the Arctic and around the world, according to a project proposal submitted by the University of Washington’s Richard Moritz, the director of SHEBA.

Scientists have long known that when sea ice forms, profound changes in the rate of exchange of energy between water and air occur, with both short- and long-term consequences for the environment.

Of particular interest to SHEBA investigators, according to Moritz, is the transitional period from spring to summer and the summer melt, “because ocean-atmospheric interactive processes at this time of year are the most influential and the least understood.”

Predictions of climate change are increasingly suspect in the scientific community because the model currently used to map out the processes contributing to global warming ­ the so-called general-circulation model ­ doesn’t factor in effects of natural interactions of arctic sea, ice and air.

Locked in the pack ice

The SHEBA project, with its floating research station 400 miles northwest of Sachs Harbour on Banks Island, ranks among the most ambitious studies ever undertaken in the Arctic. The scientists will be locked into pack ice for several months of the year.

The contract to provide the research vessel, along with food, fresh water and fuel for the scientists and support staff, is estimated to worth between US $5 million and U.S. $8 million.

“For IPI it’s a significant contract,” said Kozak, who expects the University to award the contract by the end of January.

Inuvialuit make bid

The Inuvik-based firm is leading the only wholly-Canadian bid to provide logistical support for the SHEBA team. The Inuit-owned company is teaming with the Coast Guard to offer use of the Canadian ice-breaker, Sir John Franklin, as the research platform.

“They wouldn’t have been able to had their ship not been available,” said Kozak. “They’ve only done this a couple of times before.”

The Sir John Franklin, named for one of the Arctic’s most notorious 19th-century British explorers, was chartered for use in the Voisey Bay oil explorations last year.

Some researchers have expressed concern that the ship, which burns five tons of fuels per day generating electricity and fresh water, may corrupt the scientific data, since virtually all the electricity generated ends up as waste energy, either in the water or the air around the ship.

Franklin, a British pioneer of Arctic exploration, perished with his crew in the late 1840s when the ship under his command, Erebus, became lodged in ice while searching for the elusive Northwest Passage.