Northwest Passage Opens Due to Global Warming

John Cabot in 1497, Hernan Cortes in 1539 and Henry Hudson in 1609 could not do what global warming did in 2007: Blaze a trail through the Arctic, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The fabled Northwest passage, which for centuries was the focus of exploration and which even today holds lucrative potential for those seeking shorter shipping routes, was spotted for the first time by the European Space Agency.

As has been previously reported, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic is at a record minimum -- and it reached its lowest annual point a full month before the typical annual low. The European Space Agency reported that this week, the sea ice reached the lowest extent it has ever measured with satellites. With that milestone, came the opening of the Northwest Passage, the European Space Agency reported Friday. Not only has a fully navigable route opened across Canada (marked in orange), but a second passage, across Siberia (marked in blue), is only partially blocked.

In this mosaic image, created from nearly 200 images acquired in early September 2007 by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard ESA''s Envisat satellite, the dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas while green represents areas with sea ice. (ESA) "The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected and that we urgently need to understand better the processes involved," Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said in a statement on the ESA's Web site. The Polar Regions are very sensitive indicators of climate change.

The UN''s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed these regions are highly vulnerable to rising temperatures and predicted the Arctic would be virtually ice free by the summer of 2070, according to the ESA. Still other scientists predict it could become ice free as early as 2040 due to rising temperatures and sea ice decline. As sea ice disappears, it feeds a positive-feedback cycle of warming. The bright surface of sea ice no longer reflects sunlight, and its energy is instead absorbed by the darker ocean water, further warming the region's environment and making it less likely that ice will re-form.

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