Defense Department, Services Monitor Arctic Melting

By Lisa Daniel

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2011 – With the number of geopolitical hotspots in the world today, the Arctic is not an area that comes quickly to mind for possible defense operations. But it is a place of great national security and strategic importance that the Defense Department and services are monitoring closely.

In a report sent to Congress earlier this month, DOD officials say the Arctic is a place they and the services are paying attention to because of rapid climate change there that likely will open the area to greater human inhabitation and possible threats to U.S. interests.

The polar icecap and harsh Arctic environment have long enhanced U.S. security by acting as a northern barrier to the United States, the report says. The melting of the icecap already is causing increased human activity, such as with oil and gas exploration and tourism, that could affect U.S. interests there and raise issues about maritime travel, it says.

Navy Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, explained the level of U.S. interests in the Arctic during a June 16 Arctic seminar here. The region is “extraordinarily important for our Navy, for our military, and for our nation,” he said.

“There is a phenomenal event taking place on the planet today,” Roughead said, referring to the opening up of the Arctic Ocean from melting polar ice caps. “We haven’t had an ocean open on this planet since the end of the Ice Age. So, if this is not a significant change that requires new, and I would submit, brave thinking on the topic, I don’t know what other sort of physical event could produce that.”

Roughead established a task force to consider climate change’s impact on the Navy and how it should respond. Some things to consider is how melting ice and warming oceans will cause fish to travel north, opening up a fishing industry in the Arctic, as well as create more maritime traffic, in general. Within 25 years, he said, the Arctic could become a profitable sea route from Asia to Europe.

Besides the occasional battle at sea, the admiral said, “navies exist to grease the intercourse of commerce globally.”

The Army also is taking steps to reassess its Arctic capabilities and plan for changing conditions in the region, the report says. The renewed military interest follows years of drawdown in the Arctic that followed the end of the Cold War with Russia.

According to the report, the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of planet, resulting in increased human activity in the area, and presenting the opportunity for multilateral cooperation in shaping the future there.

The report stops short of advising a renewed military buildup in the Arctic, citing the lack of scientific consensus on long-term environmental changes there, the expectation that growth will be gradual and uneven, and the long lead time needed to develop capabilities there -- all of which occur at a time of strict budget constraints.

Despite the warming, the Arctic still is an inhospitable climate, making defense capabilities difficult, the report says. Also, it notes, communications and the performance global positioning systems are limited in the area by magnetic and solar phenomena and poor satellite geometry and ionospheric effects, respectively.

The report notes there is low risk of military hostilities in the Arctic. The United States is part of the eight-member Arctic Council, along with Russia, Canada, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. All are publically committed to working within a common framework of international laws and diplomacies, and have demonstrated that commitment for 50 years, it says.

Still, DOD officials say the report and the department’s careful monitoring of the Arctic is important so the United States can be on the leading edge of protecting its interests there. Because the changes are slow-onset, one DOD official told American Forces Press Service, “We have the ability to shape how that happens and ensure it happens in a cooperative fashion. It gives us the ability to move forward in a measured and strategic way.”

As the department assesses the situation, officials are mindful of the national interests of its partner nations in the Arctic, namely Russia, which has some 4,350 miles of Arctic coastline, and garners 12 percent of its gross domestic product from the region, the report says.

Read More >>

NASA Sets Sail on Second Leg of Arctic Ocean Research Voyage

Steve Cole

Headquarters, Washington                                   

WASHINGTON -- Scientists embark this week from Alaska on the second and final campaign of a NASA field campaign to study how changing conditions in the Arctic affect the ocean's chemistry and ecosystems.

On June 25, the ICESCAPE mission, or "Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment," resumes its shipborne investigation of the impacts of climate change in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas along Alaska's western and northern coasts. Research teams depart from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy.

The field campaign takes 47 scientists for five weeks to the Arctic Ocean, where a variety of instruments will be used onboard the Healy and deployed into the ocean and on the sea ice. Following the mission's first campaign in summer 2010, the second year of sampling seeks to find year-to-year differences and provide data for new lines of investigation.

Combined observations from the field and from NASA satellites are critical to understanding the Arctic, where the signals of climate change are amplified. The accelerated decline of Arctic sea ice extent and thickness exemplifies this trend, and scientists want to know how this change affects other ocean processes and marine life.

"Multidisciplinary field campaigns like ICESCAPE take advantage of simultaneous satellite and field measurements," said Carlos Del Castillo, acting program manager of the Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The advantage of satellites is that we can routinely collect observations of the whole planet. That data combined with field work and computer modeling gives us a better understanding of how the Earth system works."

Phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that live in watery environments, are a key focus of the campaign. They form the base of the aquatic food web, participate in cycling Earth's carbon between the atmosphere and the ocean and are susceptible to climate change. NASA has monitored changes in phytoplankton from space worldwide with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument on the Aqua satellite and the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor, which ended observations in 2010.

"Last year, ICESCAPE nailed down quite a few things in terms of the phytoplankton work," said Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., the mission's chief scientist. "We know pretty well now how fast they are growing and what they are responding to. The repeat measurements from this voyage will help us confirm what's going on."

The 2010 campaign gave researchers a glimpse of what might be happening in Barrow Canyon, one of most productive areas for phytoplankton growth in the Beaufort-Chukchi region. While many blooms last just a few weeks before consuming all of the local nutrients and declining, the bloom in Barrow Canyon gets its start in spring and carries on through summer.

Scientists think the extended bloom can be explained by unique patterns in the path and timing of ocean currents. In spring, a stream of water carries nutrients from the Pacific Ocean up through the Bering Strait and delivers them to Barrow Canyon. The water hugs the coast and arrives quickly, providing the nutrients for the bloom to get its start. Two other streams take a more circuitous route and arrive later, sustaining the bloom through summer.

"With this year's voyage, we hope to acquire more details about the physical processes pulling nutrients from deep water to the surface," Arrigo said.

New to ICESCAPE in 2011, the ship will forge north through the Beaufort Sea to explore the relationship between shallow water on the continental shelf and deep water in the Canada Basin. Phytoplankton on the shallow shelves tend to flourish when the ice retreats and scientists want to find out what feeds the bloom.

Last year, researchers saw some indication that nutrients were moving between deep and shallow water. Wind unexpectedly blew thick, multiyear sea ice south to the edge of the shelf, at some places up to 20 feet thick. The ice proved too thick for the icebreaker to penetrate. The Healy, the newest and most technologically advanced U.S. polar icebreaker, is designed to break four-and-a-half feet of ice continuously at three knots.

This year, the field campaign begins two weeks later, which means the Healy is expected to encounter thinner, summer ice and thus have a better chance of exploring the ecosystems in water that spends most of the year under a blanket of ice.

For updates on the five-week ICESCAPE voyage, visit the mission blog at http://go.usa.gov/WwU.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit http://www.nasa.gov.

- end -

Read More >>

IceBridge: Flight over the Navy Ice Camp

By Julie Weckerlein

Lt. Cmdr. John Woods is a Meteorology and Oceanography Officer (METOC) currently teaching in the Oceanography Department at the United States Naval Academy (USNA). He is part of the Sea Ice Thickness Observation team currently participating in NASA’s Operation IceBridge 2011(OIB 2011).

This was the flight I had been waiting for. Back in 2009, I traveled with two U.S. Navy midshipmen to the Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station (APLIS) to participate in ICEX09, a submarine force exercise conducted by the Arctic Submarine Laboratory. We stayed on the ice for three days and two nights, and experienced the extreme conditions of the Arctic environment first hand. We also observed submarine operations, including the surfacing of the USS ANNAPOLIS through the ice. This year, coordination to participate in the camp again did not work out, but I was grateful to get to participate in the NASA IceBridge mission and fly over the camp.

It is nice to get a different perspective of the environment from above. Jackie Richter-Menge, the IceBridge Science Team Sea Ice Lead, was down on the ice with her team setting up a survey line of different types of instruments measuring the sea ice properties. The NASA P-3 was to fly over the survey line and collect data to be compared to the measurements collected below.

We departed Fairbanks Airport at 7 a.m., and began the 90-minute flight north. The camp is located approximately 200 miles off the northern coast of Alaska on the frozen Beaufort Sea. We were in constant communication with the camp relaying their current positions to assist the pilots to navigate to the camp. Once the camp was in sight we began our survey. Flying over the camp at approximately 1000 feet, we could see Jackie’s team on the ice below, waving up at us. They looked like ants even from this “reasonably low” altitude.

We flew over the camp over 10 times for close to two hours.  Each pass, we had to correct for the camps drift.  The camp was moving at approximately 300 meters per hour, so the survey line was constantly shifting.  It is amazing to think that the frozen ocean is moving at that fast of a pace.  The camp itself consists of only a handful of structures.  If you would like more information on the camp, they have their own blog.

After about two hours of flying in ovals over the camp and collecting  hours of data, we headed back to Fairbanks.  This was my final flight during IceBridge 2011.  In total, I flew for close to 40 hours on five different flights, covering nearly 10,000 miles.

It was a great experience and I want to thank everyone involved in the mission for allowing Midshipman Brugler and myself this wonderful opportunity.

Read More >>

ICESCAPE

The terrain for the scientific work conducted by ICESCAPE scientists on July 4, 2010, was Arctic sea ice and melt ponds in the Chukchi Sea. The five-week field mission was dedicated to sampling the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of the ocean and sea ice. Impacts of Climate change on the Eco-Systems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment, or ICESCAPE Mission, is a multi-year NASA shipborne project. The bulk of the research will take place in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in summer of 2010 and fall of 2011.

Image Credit: NASA/Kathryn Hansen

Read More >>

Northwest Greenland Canyons

On March 29, 2011, Operation IceBridge flew between deep canyons and over glaciers along the northwest coast of Greenland. IceBridge, now in its third year, makes annual campaigns in the Arctic and Antarctic where science flights monitor glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice.

Image Credit: NASA/Michael Studinger

Read More >>