Transforming scenario…
Their world is melting! And with it, their way of life and their culture. Here climate change is a reality and not a distant threat.

In the last century, parts of the Arctic have warmed by 10 degrees Fahrenheit - 10 times the global average. Sea ice covers 15 percent less of the Arctic Ocean than it did 20 years ago, and that ice has shrunk 5 to 10 percent and thinned from an average of 10 feet to less than 6. The warm season now starts earlier and finishes later. In spots, the coastline is disappearing. Some villages have lost up to 300 feet of land!

Satellite measurements show the area covered by Arctic winter sea ice reached an all-time low in March, 2006, down some 300,000 square kilometres on last year (an area bigger than the UK)!

Canary in the coal mine… of Climate Change…
Among the problems the Inuit face is permafrost melting, which has destroyed the foundations of houses, eroded the seashore and forced people to move inland. Airport runways, roads and harbours are also collapsing. This, coupled with rising sea levels, threatens to displace an entire community. Slumping, the collapse of land under the weight of newly thawed permafrost, is also altering the look of the land along the coast.  Moreover, fresh water draining from ice and snow on land is decreasing the salinity of far northern oceans.

Thunder and lightning, once rare, have become fairly common here. An eerie warm wind now blows in from the south. Hunters who prided themselves on their ability to read the sky say they no longer can predict the sudden blizzards.

“The Earth,” one hunter concluded, “is turning faster.”

Dying world
This change is spelling doom for the wildlife and vegetation as well. Here are a few instances:

• Caribou, long a staple of Inuit diet, are falling through once-solid sea ice.

• Polar bears are losing the floes they need for hunting.

• Seals, unable to find stable ice, are hauling up on islands to give birth.

• Populations of bowhead whales and walrus are declining too. They appear sick and undernourished.

• Reindeer and Tundra rabbits are becoming scarce.

• The organisms essential to the diet of Eider ducks living on St. Lawrence Island have been in rapid decline, while both the plants and ducks have moved north.

• Many species of plankton, the microscopic plants that form the essential base of the entire marine food web, are moving north to escape the warming water on the ocean surface off Greenland and Alaska.

• In recent years, seabirds have washed up dead by the thousands and deformed seal pups have become a common sight.

• Scientists are monitoring a tundra vegetation tree line that is advancing north as the Arctic warms.

• As traditional Arctic species move north, new species are moving in:

• Grizzly bears have been spotted in territory once dominated by polar bears.

• Salmon, never before caught far north, are making appearances in fishermen’s nets.

Robins, barn owls and hornets, previously unknown so far north, are arriving in Arctic villages.

Vicious Cycle
Scientists say that with the recovery of the ice in winter no longer sufficient to balance the increased melting in the summer, the Arctic Ocean could lose all of its ice much earlier than expected, possibly by 2030!

Warmer weather in the Arctic may drive temperatures to rise! The dark water beneath absorbs more of the sun’s radiation, and the frozen tundra is also a huge carbon sink (that is, the soil holds carbon that could otherwise end up in the atmosphere). With this guard gone, global warming could quickly run out of control!