Research around the north pole

The North Pole region is an area with unique ecosystems and valuable natural resources. Today it is experiencing particularly rapid change as a result of global climate change. However, research in the High Arctic is a cost and time intensive effort, because the “data archives” in the Arctic Ocean lie under metres of snow and ice. The ice cover also determines which areas research vessels can reach at all. “Sometimes we return with more data than expected and sometimes with less,” says Dr. Wilfried Jokat from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. Jokat and his colleagues brought back a lot more data than they had hoped for last autumn.

The thin sea ice cover had made ocean areas navigable that had previously not been accessible. From August to October 2008, the German research vessel and icebreaker Polarstern sailed around the Pole – passing through the North-West and North-East Passages in a single season, the first research vessel ever to have done this. “Just three years ago, I would have said this is completely impossible,” says Jokat, who headed the 47-strong team of scientists from twelve nations.

During the voyage the researchers concentrated on the region of eastern Siberia. “The entire area north of the Behring Strait is highly interesting but hardly explored.” Jokat and his team above all wanted to know what it looked like during the last ice age. It was known that North America and Europe were covered by glaciers. But was the land to the east also covered in ice? “The initial results from this expedition clearly say: “Yes,” says Jokat. “For example, we found the scrours that icebergs typically leave on the sea floor.” However, where the ice came from and how far it extended is still open to debate. Did the glaciers spread across from Canada or did eastern Siberia possibly have its own ice sheet? “This would mean that previous reconstructions of how the ice sheets were distributed would be incorrect.”

And another aspect was focused on by the scientists and researchers headed by Jokat. “We do not know what factors determine when and how quickly the ice and warm periods change.” One school of thought is that the formation of the Isthmus of Panama around three million years ago caused a change in ocean circulation. Ever since, the interchange between ice and warm periods has proceeded comparatively quickly. Model simulations for Greenland, for example, predict that today’s island glaciers could completely melt away within an estimated 5,000 years – in geological terms just a blink of the eye. “We do not know how normal or unusual it is in Earth’s history for this to occur so quickly. Perhaps faster interchanges already took place five or ten million years ago. Because we don’t know this for sure, we can currently do no more than estimate as well as we can how significant the speed of ice retreat today really is,” says Jokat.

Predictions on natural resource deposits in the Arctic are also vague. Just under a third of the previously undiscovered natural gas deposits worldwide are said to be located around the North Pole, plus 13 per cent of the currently unrecorded deposits of mineral oil, says an assessment published by American geologists in “Science” in May 2009. Samples that could confirm or refute these assumptions hardly exist. As part of the Integrated Ocean Floor Drilling Program (IODP), scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute drilled a revealing sediment core. “But we have just this one core,” says Jokat, leaving everyone to think for themselves what this means. However, the US industry also collected drill cores as part of its own exploratory activities in the 1970s and 1980s. The researchers are now comparing these with the data from circumnavigating the North Pole to identify parallels and differences in the glacial history of North America and Canada with that of Siberia.

But even that is not enough. To draw sound conclusions, the basic parameters we use for climate and natural resources models must be as accurate as possible. “Otherwise the model runs are unconstrained, and may be biased by current thinking.” The data from the voyage round the North Pole will help in this respect. “Our current equipment allows us to sample down to 10 metres beneath the ocean floor. With different technology and equipment, we might manage to go down as far as 500 metres.” The Alfred Wegener Institute has already submitted its proposals for deep scientific drilling. Wilfried Jokat is convinced. “Carrying on here is worth it, absolutely.” For, to be able to predict how this region will develop, the scientists have to look back into the past. Only when the history is known will the entries in the longterm forecasting models also be correct.