CLIMATE’S CLIFF In the Warming Arctic Seas SUBHANKAR BANERJEE 18 SUBHANKAR BANERJEE ARCTIC SEAS RCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE noticed a perfect reflection and clicked the REFUGE—I was standing in the shutter. In 2001, almost no one, includ- Aback of the sled when it broke ing the biologists, anticipated what was to through the ice, plunging into the frigid happen to the bears of the Beaufort Sea. water of the Hulahula River. Just in time, Dialing the clock back a bit further to Robert yanked the machine. The heavy April, Robert and I were traveling through sled, instead of falling on me, gradually the Canning River Valley in the western moved out of the shallow water. It must edge of the Arctic NWR, when we came have been about 40 degrees below zero. I across a band of 13 muskoxen with a new- began to settle into hypothermia. Robert born calf, likely a day or two old. The woolly Thompson and his cousin Perry Anashugak bovines were migrating from the foothills of quickly set up the tent and lit both burners the Brooks Range Mountains to the coastal of the Coleman stove. Inside a sleeping bag, plain. Muskoxen, one of the most adapted I began to warm up. That day, I escaped animals to the extreme cold of the Arctic, death, barely. “The river is supposed to have give birth on exposed land when the ground solid ice on the surface in November, not is covered with snow and temperatures dip fragile like this,” Robert lamented. That way below freezing. A few hours after the was 2001, in the Arctic National Wildlife sighting, a strong blizzard started to blow, Refuge (NWR) in northeast Alaska. the temperature around 35 below zero with Five months before the Hulahula River windchills approaching minus 100 degrees incident, in mid-June, Robert and I were Fahrenheit. Robert thought it was “unusu- standing on the northern edge of Barter al” that the band of muskoxen with a new- Island. In front of us was Barnard Har- born calf would migrate like that. bor that extends to a barrier island, which meets the Beaufort Sea. On the south was HARBINGERS the coastal plain of the Arctic NWR. A These incidents constitute a starting point, short distance away a mid-sized polar bear showing how varieties of environmental was approaching a whale bone left behind changes have arrived in a rather short time, from the previous year’s hunt by the Iñu- since the turn of the 21st century, in a par- piat people of Kaktovik. The sea ice on the ticular place—each representative of the harbor was still frozen, but the snow on top many significant climate change impacts was beginning to melt, creating puddles. that affect the human communities and the There was no wind, and the evening sun nonhuman biotic life in the entire circum- was casting a warm glow on the white sea- polar Arctic. When land and sea are going scape and on the ivory fur of the bear. As through rapid changes, inhabitants of the the bear walked past one of the puddles, I area are usually the first to witness it. In Subhankar Banerjee, an artist, writer, and environmental humanities scholar, was a Di- rector’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and received a Cultural Freedom Award from Lannan Foundation. He is editor of the anthology, Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point (Seven Stories Press, 2013), and author of Seasons of Life and Land: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Mountaineers Books, 2003). His pho- tographs have been exhibited in more than 50 museums around the world. SUMMER 2015 19 CLIMATE’S CLIFF 2002, the Arctic Research Consortium of out of sheet lead; snow had eroded the the United States, in cooperation with the wood to where the lead was in relief. Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian We also found a wooden marker with a Institution, pointed out that the indigenous non-native name over by Sungiksaluk, peoples “are already witnessing disturbing perhaps a whaler. There was also a body and severe climatic and ecological changes,” that came out of the ground to the east. even though “the majority of the Earth’s cit- It was reburied in our cemetery. izens have not seen any significant climate changes thus far.” Thirteen years later, a ma- The Arctic is warming at a rate of at jority of the world’s people are experiencing least twice the global average. With this significant impacts of climate change. In the rapid warming, permafrost, or perma- Arctic, the changes have only accelerated. nently frozen ground, is thawing. When Iñupiaq conservationist Robert Thomp- permafrost thaws, the organic matter inside son and his wife Jane live in Kaktovik, a begins to break down and releases carbon small town of about 300 residents on Bar- dioxide and methane, the latter about 86 ter Island. A decade ago, the conversations times more potent than carbon dioxide, as a I had with residents of Kaktovik and Arc- greenhouse gas over a 20-year period. One tic Village focused on both climate change of the most visible signs of thawing perma- and oil development. The lakes were drying frost is “drunken forest”—trees leaning at up, affecting subsistence fishing. The wil- odd angles as they lose their footing in the low plants were getting much larger and unstable soil. In November 2007, large ar- bushier affecting migration of caribou. And eas of drunken forest were spreading near wildfires were becoming widespread and Nelemonoye, a Yukaghir community along more destructive. All this came from the the upper Kolyma River in the Sakha Re- Gwich’in people, while the Iñupiat people public. Thawing of terrestrial permafrost said the sea ice was retreating rapidly and also has major impact on ecology, hydrol- the permafrost was beginning to thaw. ogy, and human infrastructures, as homes, In early August 2006, at the north- buildings, roads, and runways can collapse western edge of Barter Island, a coffin was as the ground underneath begins to buckle. lying exposed with bones scattered near- In addition to carbon stored in the organ- by. The permafrost around the coffin had ic matter inside permafrost, there is also an thawed. Robert told me in an email: enormous amount of methane trapped inside icy crystals known as clathrates. Scientists do The grave we saw on the other side not yet know how much clathrate is in the of the island was of a child. Lon Son- Arctic but think that much of the carbon salla, Fenton Rexford, and I went over stored in the Arctic is inside clathrates, which there when we heard that a brown bear can be found either deep in terrestrial perma- had broken into the coffin and scattered frost or beneath Arctic shelves offshore, ac- the body. I picked up a foot. It startled cording to a U.S. National Research Council me—it was so light, freeze-dried. We Report. The release of methane from terres- put all the parts back in the box, nailed trial permafrost is a slower process, but from it shut, and reburied the person. There subsea permafrost it can happen steadily, or in are two other exposed graves with dates sudden, potentially catastrophic, pulses. More of 1932. These had names and dates cut than a decade of research by Russian scientists 20 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL ARCTIC SEAS Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov shows winter months, followed by freezing tem- that methane is being actively released from peratures that create a hard layer of ice on subsea permafrost in the East Siberian Arc- tundra that animals like caribou or reindeer tic Shelf. Based on their field observations, a and muskoxen cannot break through to team of physical and social scientists in Eu- find food. Earlier this year, Kim Holmén, rope have shown that a decade-long 50-gi- the international director of the Norwegian gaton methane pulse from the East Siberian Polar Institute told a Guardian reporter Arctic Shelf could cost the global economy that, “Much of Svalbard is covered with an average of $60 trillion. To put this in per- ice on land, which is a fatal state for the spective, the financial damage from just one reindeer,” while the extreme storm, Hurricane Sandy that hit the fjords around Svalbard East Coast of the United States in 2012, was remained unfrozen. muskoxen barely $60 billion. So the aggregate impact Holmén further said and caribou on property, infrastructure, and food produc- that they are experi- tion of a 50-gigaton methane pulse would be encing “more icing or reindeer equivalent to 1,000 Hurricane Sandys. events,” and when that are the only “I was rained on in February,” Robert happens the reindeer said speaking of an experience he had in win- “can’t move around, arctic hoofed ter 2006. “To me, an Iñupiaq, residing on the and they can’t eat.” animals that edge of the Arctic Ocean, to be rained on in University of made it from February is strange.” In the winter of 2005 to Gothenberg Profes- 2006, a thousand caribou from the Teshek- sor Tyrone Martins- the pleistocene puk Lake herd came over to the Arctic NWR, son first went to era to modern a 240-mile journey. “It rained and then the Svalbard in 2001. times, but tundra froze over there, and the animals came He circumnavigated over to our area to find food,” Robert recalled. Svalbard that sum- remain “But it also rained on Barter Island, and the mer at 80 degrees vulnerable to tundra froze.