Guest essay by Eric Worrall

From the “Global Warming Causes More Snow” department comes a claim that the substantially increased risk of maritime embarrassment for scientists trying to sail to the North Pole is the result of global warming.

New research documents a counterintuitive impact of global warming: sea-ice hazards to shipping

Human-caused warming is popping the frozen corks that normally bottle up thick sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, allowing it to pour south

Ships plying the North Atlantic Ocean in spring are facing increased hazards from floating Arctic sea ice as a result of human-caused global warming.

That might seem counterintuitive, but here’s what’s happening, according to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:

Warming temperatures are causing ice that normally blocks narrow ocean passages in winter and spring to break up earlier than in the past. Like a cork removed from a champagne bottle, the early break up in these passages is allowing thick, old sea ice to flow south from the Arctic Ocean into the North Atlantic, choking areas used by fishing, shipping and ferry boats.

“Heavy ice conditions along Canada’s east coast during spring 2017 presented hazardous conditions for the maritime industry at a time of year when vessels typically do not need to contend with sea ice,” the researchers note in their paper. As warming has caused Arctic sea ice to shrink and thin overall:

… it has become increasingly mobile. This has contributed to increased ice transport through narrow channels along the periphery of the Arctic Ocean … and increased the presence of thick multiyear sea ice from the High Arctic at more southern locations that have typically not contended with such sea ice.

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