Once Again into the Northwest Passage
https://eos.org/science-updates/once-again-into-the-northwest-passage
Source: By Frances Crable, Cynthia Garcia-Eidell, Theressa Ewa, Humair Raziuddin, and Samira Umar, Eos/AGU.
Excerpt: Early European explorers of the New World searched in vain for an easy sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. ...Roald Amundsen and his crew finally succeeded in making an all-water crossing of this hazardous route in 1906. One consequence of recent rapid Arctic warming is that the Northwest Passage is now ice free (or nearly so) for a longer period of time each year, and establishing shipping routes in this region is no longer a pipe dream. ...Over the past 3 years, researchers and undergraduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have prepared and joined the Northwest Passage Project [https://northwestpassageproject.org/], a research and cultural expedition to the Northwest Passage funded by the National Science Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation. Participants in the project are seeking to understand how this region is changing as a result of climate change, with the aim of further spreading awareness about the severity and global effects of these changes. ...The UIC students aboard the successful 2019 expedition had two main objectives. First, we wanted to document greenhouse gas exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere and assess how Arctic climate change is affecting carbon fluxes between these two reservoirs. ...Second, we wanted to evaluate salinity and water isotopic information to determine how terrestrial processes and the influence of freshwater inputs are affecting marine ecosystem properties. ...We also participated in outreach activities and visits to archeological sites and Inuit communities....
Source: By Frances Crable, Cynthia Garcia-Eidell, Theressa Ewa, Humair Raziuddin, and Samira Umar, Eos/AGU.
Excerpt: Early European explorers of the New World searched in vain for an easy sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. ...Roald Amundsen and his crew finally succeeded in making an all-water crossing of this hazardous route in 1906. One consequence of recent rapid Arctic warming is that the Northwest Passage is now ice free (or nearly so) for a longer period of time each year, and establishing shipping routes in this region is no longer a pipe dream. ...Over the past 3 years, researchers and undergraduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have prepared and joined the Northwest Passage Project [https://northwestpassageproject.org/], a research and cultural expedition to the Northwest Passage funded by the National Science Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation. Participants in the project are seeking to understand how this region is changing as a result of climate change, with the aim of further spreading awareness about the severity and global effects of these changes. ...The UIC students aboard the successful 2019 expedition had two main objectives. First, we wanted to document greenhouse gas exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere and assess how Arctic climate change is affecting carbon fluxes between these two reservoirs. ...Second, we wanted to evaluate salinity and water isotopic information to determine how terrestrial processes and the influence of freshwater inputs are affecting marine ecosystem properties. ...We also participated in outreach activities and visits to archeological sites and Inuit communities....