© naturepl.com / Bryan and Cherry Alexander / WWF
In brief
News from the Arctic (2023.02)
© naturepl.com / Martha Holmes / WWF
Bowhead whales on the move
DISRUPTED WHALE MIGRATION PATTERNS
Researchers have found that some bowhead whales in the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort population have stopped migrating from the Canadian Beaufort Sea to the northwestern Bering Sea in winter due to declining sea ice in the Beaufort area.
Researchers discovered the change using acoustic monitoring, traditional knowledge, aerial surveys and satellite tagging.
The pattern alteration may put the bowhead whales at greater risk of ship strikes, fishing net entanglements, and problems caused by underwater noise—which can interfere with whale signals related to hunting, feeding, navigating, mating and more—because the decline in sea ice may also attract more shipping vessels.
So far, the shift hasn’t affected Indigenous communities that rely on whale hunting, but researchers say this could change in future, particularly at the southern end of the whales’ range. The change does not seem to have affected the size of the whale population, which has recovered following past commercial whaling.
Montreal Protocol slows sea ice thaw
OZONE PROTECTION BENEFITS THE CLIMATE
Climate scientists have been trying to predict how soon the Arctic will experience its first ice-free summer. The date is a moving target—but it seems that at least one climate agreement is having a positive impact.
The Montreal Protocol, an international treaty banning ozone-destroying gases, was agreed upon in 1987, when representatives from around the world gathered in Canada to agree on a plan to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other aerosols that were eating away at the ozone layer. These same substances are also greenhouse gases, some far more potent than carbon dioxide.
While the protocol’s purpose was to preserve the ozone layer, scientists say it seems to have had unexpected climate benefits, and may be delaying sea ice loss in the Arctic. A recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the Montreal Protocol had averted more than half a million square kilometres of Arctic summer sea ice loss by 2020 by limiting warming in the region.
As for the ozone layer, it appears to be on track to recover by the mid-21st century to values first observed in 1980, before the appearance of the ozone hole.
© en Nag / flicr.com (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Research station at the top of the world is thawing
DATA MELTING AWAY
At Earth’s northernmost year-round research station, scientists are having a harder and harder time accessing the data they need to understand the impacts of climate change.
The tiny town of Ny-Ålesund sits high above the Arctic circle in the Svalbard archipelago. The town and its research station are a destination for scientists from 11 countries who come to study how climate change is transforming the Arctic and what these changes will mean for the rest of the planet.
The research station’s weather records date back more than 40 years. But recently, scientists have been encountering glacier melt where they expected ice cores, and have run into difficulties reaching research sites when earlier-than-usual springtime warmth melts ice paths. Last year, one of the research station’s laboratories closed after thawing permafrost cracked its foundation. Polar bear sightings in the area are on the rise.
Svalbard is warming nearly seven times faster than the global average. Scientists who could once plan to travel around the area in June now cannot do fieldwork past mid-May. This year, a team that intended to drill 125 metres to collect two ice cores on the Dovrebreen glacier were taken aback when they hit water at only 25 metres of depth.
Microplastics in Arctic ice algae
POLLUTION FROM THE BOTTOM UP
Along with other organisms, algae sit at the base of the food web—so researchers were dismayed to find that the algae known as Melosira arctica, which grow under Arctic sea ice, contain 10 times as many microplastic particles as the surrounding sea water. This concentration poses a threat to creatures that feed on the algae at the sea surface. Melosira arctica grow at a rapid pace under the sea ice during spring and summer and form an important food source for bottom-dwelling animals and bacteria.
These findings were published by a research team from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.
The presence of micro- and nano-plastics in the Arctic isn’t new: these have been detected around the world, transported to even the most remote regions by ocean and atmospheric currents and biota from both distant and local sources. But their presence in Arctic ice algae is worrying for a few reasons.
One is that the climate crisis is already making it harder for many Arctic species to survive, and exposure to microplastics could weaken them further. Another is that people in the Arctic are particularly dependent on the marine food web for nutrition, so they are also exposed to these microplastics.
The research team has pointed out that the most effective way to reduce plastic pollution is to reduce the production of new plastic in the first place.
By WWF Global Arctic Programme
