Foggy future for Arctic shipping as sea ice melts - The Guardian
Foggy future for Arctic shipping as sea ice melts | Environment | The Guardian
Rapid warming in the Arctic has opened up faster shipping channels through the fabled Northwest Passage in recent decades, but a study reveals that the reduction in ice is likely to lead to increased levels of fog, potentially removing the benefits of these high-latitude short cuts.
As sea ice melts, more of the underlying warmer water comes into contact with cold air, increasing the chances of water vapour condensing into fog.
Xianyao Chen from the Ocean University of China and colleagues plugged historical fog data into climate models to assess how much the fogginess along the Northwest Passage (through the Canadian archipelago) and the Northern Sea Route (along the Russian Arctic coast) is likely to increase.
Their findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, show that fog is already slowing shipping along these routes, and by 2100 increased fogginess could add three days to the Northwest Passage route (under a moderate 3C warming scenario). Furthermore, the reduced visibility increases the risk of collision with icebergs.
The results suggest that many of the current projections for Arctic shipping routes could be too optimistic in terms of the amount of time and money they can save, but adjusting shipping routes away from the sea ice edge (where the worst fog occurs) could lower risks and save time.
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What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.