The recent collapse of a Canadian Arctic ice shelf illustrates why Canada is the biggest contributor to the International Polar Year, reportedly the largest global scientific research programme, focused on climate change. More than 60 nations, from Chile to China, and 50,000 scientists and researchers will be involved in the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, actually the period from March 1, 2007 to the same date in 2009.

Canadian scientists recently reported the collapse of the Ayles Ice Shelf, one of the only six ice shelves left in Canada. At 66 square kilometres and 40 metres thick, Canada’s new ice island is small compared with the collapse of giant Antarctic ice shelves such as Larsen B, an area of 2,700 square km which broke off in 2002. However the 3,000- to 4,500-year-old Ayles shelf is the largest collapse in 25 years. Rather than large events, Arctic ice shelves have been quietly falling apart in small pieces, and are 90 per cent smaller than 100 years ago.

The IPY will study the Arctic and Antarctic regions, focusing on the effects of global warming produced by greenhouse gases. It has a budget of more than $500 million, to which Canada contributed $160 million. “The rates of change in the polar regions are accelerating. These regions are experiencing the impacts of climate change first, so it’s important to know what is happening to learn how we can adapt,” biologist David Hik, chairman of International Polar Year Canada, told Tierramérica. “An ice-free Arctic during the summer months, predicted to occur as soon as 40 years from now, will have a major impact on the region and the local people,” said Hik.

“The global climate system is a balance between the cold regions and the warm regions of the planet,” David Carlson, director of the International Polar Year Programme Office, told Tierramérica in an interview from Cambridge, England. Changes in these cold regions affect global weather patterns which have a major impact on the well-being of the rest of the planet, he said. The last major international effort to study the world’s coldest regions took place 50 years ago and was called the International Geophysical Year.

It was a landmark scientific collaboration involving 67 nations that produced data still used today. The International Polar Year is organised by the International Science Council and the World Meteorological Organisation, and sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme. Economic changes are also having a major impact in the region as warming weather, combined with rising prices for resources like oil, gas and minerals, have turned parts of the Arctic region into the fastest growing communities in Canada, according to Hik.

The Arctic basin potentially has 25 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Despite the still harsh conditions, exploration and development is booming throughout the region. “We’re already approaching a critical threshold of global warming and the seeking out of further oil and gas deposits is going to make that problem worse,” Tony Juniper, British director of Friends of the Earth, said. International treaties prevent economic exploitation of resources in the Antarctic. However, the reality in the Arctic is that “one day in the future there might be an oil rig sitting on top of the North Pole”, said Hik. — IPS