THE Arctic ice cap is melting at a rate that could allow routine commercial
shipping through the far north in a decade and open up new fisheries. But a
report for the US Navy seen by New 杏吧原创 reveals that naval vessels
will be unable to police these areas.
It was in 1906, after centuries of attempts, that Roald Amundsen finally
navigated the North-West Passage through the sea ice north of Canada. Even
today, only specially strengthened ships can make the trip.
But in 10 years鈥� time, if melting patterns change as predicted, the
North-West Passage could be open to ordinary shipping for a month each summer.
And the Northern Sea Route across the top of Russia could allow shipping for at
least two months a year in as little as five years.
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The new routes will slash the distances for voyages between Europe and East
Asia by a third, and open up new fisheries. The resulting boom in shipping could
lead to conflicts, as nations try to enforce fisheries rules, prevent smuggling
and piracy, and protect the Arctic environment from oil spills. To complicate
matters, Russia and Canada consider their northern sea routes as national
territory, while the US regards them as international waters.
These predictions come in a recently declassified report of a meeting of
American, British and Canadian Arctic and naval experts in April last year,
organised by Dennis Conlon of the US Office of Naval Research in Arlington,
Virginia. Entitled Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic, the report
reveals that standard naval operations could be close to impossible in Arctic
waters. The biggest problem is that communications satellites do not cover the
area well, says Conlon.
Modern ships and weapons rely on various kinds of sensors but none work well
in Arctic conditions, he adds. Ice complicates the way sound travels through
water, making sonar and acoustic monitoring difficult. Icy decks and high winds
make it extremely difficult for aircraft to operate. Unbroken summer daylight
makes covert operations harder.
The US and the Soviet Union invested heavily in Arctic research throughout
the cold war, because it was a place where submarines could hide under the ice,
ready to surface and launch nuclear missiles. But that research has stopped and
no new work is planned.
Peter Wadhams of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge agrees that
the Arctic could soon open up. 鈥淲ithin a decade we can expect regular summer
trade there,鈥� he predicts.
