EnviroZine: Environmnent Canada's On-line Newsmagazine

Northwest Passage Still Closed for Business

Ice Strengthened Bulk Carrier MV Arctic plies Canadian Arctic ice-covered waters. Click to enlarge.

Arctic temperatures have risen 3-4 °C over the past 50 years and recent summers have seen record minimum amounts of sea ice. Many scientists are now predicting progressively longer seasons of reduced sea ice cover, leading to improved ship access through the Northwest Passage.

However, despite these predictions, the Northwest Passage will likely be the last route in the Arctic to become useful for regular east-west transit shipping, say experts at Environment Canada's Canadian Ice Service.

The Northwest Passage

From Greenland in the east to Alaska in the west is the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, a group of hundreds of islands in northern Canada including the Queen Elizabeth chain of islands, as well as Baffin, Melville, Devon and Banks islands. In this Arctic climate species like polar bear and arctic tern can travel over land and sea for much of the year.

CCGS Terry Fox in the Northwest Passage in summer 2002. Photo: Dan Crosbie, Environment Canada. Click to enlarge.

The Northwest Passage is a series of interconnected waterways among these ice-encrusted islands. Covered with 2-metre-thick sea ice through the winter, it becomes more or less accessible to ships during the summer months. The old dream of a direct route between Europe and Asia is the attraction of this northerly passage; the passage is 9000 km shorter than the Panama Canal route and 17 000 km shorter than that around Cape Horn.

A hope that a northerly route could be found to the Orient attracted many of the earliest explorers to the Arctic since the 16^th century. Several failed attempts were made including the famous Franklin Expedition in 1845. The existence of this passage was finally proven by a Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen in the early 20^th century. The St. Roch, who supplied and patrolled Canada's Arctic for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was the first vessel to make its way through the Northwest Passage in the early 1940s.

The first commercial vessel to make its way through the Northwest Passage was the Manhattan in 1969, after the discovery of oil in northern Alaska. However, regularly scheduled shipping through the passage has never been commercially viable.

Over the past three decades, annual average sea ice extent in the Arctic has declined by 3-4 per cent per decade. While more difficult to determine, ice thickness has also been reduced significantly (as much as 40 per cent for the thickest ice). Climate models are projecting accelerated melting in the century ahead with summer sea ice in the Arctic decreasing up to 80 per cent by 2100 as a result of climate change. These trends have sparked renewed interest in researching the potential for increased shipping through the Northwest Passage.

Fast Facts:

Arctic temperatures have risen 3-4 °C over the past 50 years.

Recent summers have seen record minimum amounts of sea ice in the Arctic.

Some of the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic average more than 10 metres in thickness.

The Northwest Passage lies within the centre of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The last region of the Arctic to become safely navigable will likely be the Northwest Passage.

Related Sites

The Northwest Passage

What's Happening to Arctic Ice?

Related EnviroZine Articles

Marooned in the High Arctic

Arctic Shows Signs of Serious, Rapid Climate Change

Old and Melting Ice

Melting ice due to climate change may not be the answer that Northwest Passage shipping enthusiasts have been looking for. Environment Canada scientists believe that the complexity of ocean currents, the presence of large areas of landfast ice (ice attached to the land) and the extreme year-to-year variability of ice conditions in the Canadian Archipelago will almost certainly cause the passage to lag behind other parts of the melting Arctic ocean.

The oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic — some averaging more than 10 metres in thickness — is found along the northwestern edge of the Archipelago, where it is pushed up against the islands by the Arctic Ocean circulation. The landfast ice among the islands prevents much of this old ice from being driven into the channels by wind and ocean currents.

According to Environment Canada, warmer Arctic conditions will melt some of this landfast ice and so weaken the natural barrier, allowing the movement of old ice through the channels between the islands, to become more frequent in the Northwest Passage.

This thick, old ice flowing into the channels will present serious navigational hazards for the remainder of the century — even as the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole and towards Russia becomes nearly ice-free. And so, the last region of the Arctic to become safely navigable will likely be the Northwest Passage.

Also, ice in the Canadian Arctic is extremely variable — with ice coverage differing by as much as three times from one year to the next. This variability is expected to continue throughout this century, even as the long-term average amount of ice decreases. This unpredictability will make the Northwest Passage less attractive as an east-west transportation route, considering the importance of reliable transit time in the shipping industry.

Reduced sea ice in the Archipelago is, however, likely to allow for the increased extraction of oil and gas and make the region more accessible for tourism. This increased access to Canada's Arctic will likely instigate new sovereignty, security, social, cultural, and environmental concerns in decades to come.

Environment Canada is continuing to study the melting of sea ice in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the likelihood of shipping through the Northwest Passage and the impacts this could have on the Canadian Arctic.