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Business English: Ice melt changes the geography

In the past century, Arctic temperatures have risen twice as fast as those in the rest of the world. von FT reporters

Spring comes earlier than it used to in Tasiilaq, Greenland. The snow starts to melt weeks before it did even a decade ago in this small Inuit settlement, while ice that was once a permanent fixture on the nearby slopes now sloughs off during the short summer. An earlier spring brings flowers to the sheltered valleys around the village but causes problems for seal and fish hunters, who need firm ice on which to run their dog sleds. The Tasiilaq experience is a graphic illustration of the sharp temperature rises being experienced across the Arctic. Arctic sea ice cover shrank to a record low this year, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). And scientific data published in June suggest the ice is melting three times faster than previously thought. This means the region could be free of summer sea ice as soon as 2020, three decades earlier than predicted. That startling revision has brought added urgency to the fight among Arctic states to exploit the region's resources. It also highlights how the battle is in one sense a huge bet on climate change, which is making navigable waters hitherto covered permanently with ice. In the past century, Arctic temperatures have risen twice as fast as those in the rest of the world, leading to an average warming of about 2°C in the past 50 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body convened by the United Nations, has said the Arctic ice cap is melting at such a rate that by the middle to end of this century there will be no ice cover during the summer. The June study by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and the NSIDC is still more pessimistic. Confirming with satellite data what Inuit had been reporting anecdotally, its findings shocked climatologists and governments. Suddenly, polar melting was no longer a distant prospect. If the study is correct - and, as a single piece of research, it remains subject to challenge - the world's transport routes could be transformed within as little as five to 10 years. If the Arctic ice melts so fast that there will be none in summer by 2020, it means parts of the Arctic will become navigable within the next decade, at least for a few months of the year. This could have dramatic effects on both commercial shipping and hydrocarbon exploitation. Travel time for a container ship on the Rotterdam-Yokohama route could be cut by about a third by using the Arctic Ocean rather than the Suez Canal. Vessels could move freely, without the cumbersome - and expensive - ice-breakers on which they sometimes have to rely now. Environmentalists shudder at the prospect of an Arctic criss-crossed by commerce in this way - although any development would have to abide by international controls on marine pollution. Lawyers expect the region to become the focus of both direct protest and court challenges. Campaigners are increasingly using courts in industrial countries to contest alleged environmental damage. Protests may not be the only problem facing Arctic states. Scientific measurements made to support territorial claims could be out of date by the time cases are adjudicated years later, when sea levels have risen and coasts retreated. The result could be Kafka-esque disputes that can never be resolved because their battlefronts are constantly changing.

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