The largest research project ever undertaken in the Arctic will study the impact of global warming on the sensitive region's ecosystem next winter, Canadian project leaders said on Thursday. Researchers will troll a frigid open channel on the Beaufort Sea using a retrofitted icebreaker to study the Arctic environment and its shrinking sea ice.

The C$40 million (US$34 million) investigation involving more than 200 researchers from 14 countries is believed to be the largest single study in the International Polar Year program, launched on Thursday in Paris. It will be the first time a ship has spent the winter in the circumpolar flaw lead -- the cracks that develop between the permanent polar ice and coastal ice -- said David Barber, a Canadian sea ice expert leading the study.

"These cracks are early indicators of what we expect the Arctic to look like as we move into the future, because more and more, the Arctic will be open of sea ice," said Barber, who is based at the University of Manitoba. Global warming is amplified at the Earth's poles, melting about 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles) of Arctic ice each year, a pace that could see the region seasonally free of ice by 2050, Barber said.

Less ice means the ocean can absorb more sunlight, further heating up the water and the environment, and affecting the entire ecosystem. Even in the dead of winter, when the Arctic sees little sunlight, there is abundant life to study in the "oasis" of the flaw leads, Barber said. "The research in the project covers everything in the physical world from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the atmosphere ... and everything in the ecological world from viruses to whales," he said.

"The whole idea is to understand the interconnections between how the physical world changes and the effects it has on the biological world." The logistics of changing crews and supplying the ship in the high Arctic are daunting, although team leaders gained experience overwintering the same icebreaker, socked into frozen coastal ice, four years ago. Researchers will need to arm themselves against fearless polar bears, and gird themselves for temperatures as low as -50 Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit).

"It's a dangerous place," Barber said. "There's enough force and energy in this mobile ice to crush an icebreaker." In total, Canada will spend C$150 million (US$128 million) on 44 polar projects, making it the largest International Polar Year participant. The project is being watched by shippers, who see the Arctic's fabled Northwest Passage as a future shipping route, and by oil and gas developers, who are looking to tap the area's vast energy resources, Barber said.

An estimated 25 percent of the world's known oil and gas reserves are in the Arctic. The icebreaker used in the study has been employed to map Canada's continental margins as the country moves to claim sovereignty over reserves, Barber said. The study will also involve Inuit and Inuvialuit people who live and hunt in the region, near Banks Island in the Northwest Territories, who until recently did not have words in their language for such things as bumblebees and sunburn, Barber said. "We want to integrate the traditional knowledge they hold with the scientific knowledge from these projects," Barber said.
(Por Roberta Rampton, Planet Ark, 02/03/2007)