As the Arctic warms in response to rising concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, some eagerly anticipate the opening of the Northwest Passage for ship navigation. Others applaud the potential to ramp up petroleum exploration and fishery efforts in the Arctic Ocean. But, there are real costs to Arctic warming.
Existing infrastructure was not designed with warmer temperatures in mind. Thawing permafrost in the Prudhoe Bay oilfield was not anticipated when oil was first discovered and brought to market 40 years ago. Subsurface melting, erosion, and collapse under structures will be an enormous engineering problem for the Arctic.
The Navy now realizes that it must cope with deployment in a 4th ocean. While submarines have patrolled the Arctic Ocean for decades, surface deployments are a new development that will carry a hefty price tag.
By far the largest cost may stem from changes due to the warming itself. Eban Goodstein is an environmental economist at Bard College.
“As the Arctic is starting to melt, that Arctic air conditioner is breaking down, The white ice cap is turning to black ocean, and there’s a lot less snow on the land mass surrounding the arctic. That white snow is turning to dark forest. That’s changing the albedo of the Arctic, and leading to the region absorbing a lot more of that sunlight and heating that part of the world up. In addition, as that area warms, it’s releasing a lot of greenhouse gases – methane and carbon dioxide – that are trapped in the frozen tundra.”
The Arctic: it’s not just for polar bears anymore.
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Web Extra
Eban Goodstein, an environmental economist at Bard College, talks about where the warming Arctic ranks when discussing the impacts of climate change…
[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/goodstein_web-extra.mp3|titles=goodstein_web extra].
Web Links
Please see: Euskirchen et al. (2014). An estimated cost of lost climate regulation services caused by thawing of the Arctic cryosphere. Ecological Applications.
Raynolds et al. (2014). Cumulatie geoecological effects of 62 years of infrastructure and climate change in ice-rich permafrost landscapes, Prudhoe Bay Oilfield, Alaska. Global Change Biology.
Photo, taken on September 12, 2013, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.
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Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.