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Melting Ice, Arctic Health Will Get Millions for International Polar Year

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 February 2007, 18:35 CST

By SUE BAILEY

OTTAWA (CP) - Melting ice and Arctic health will get millions of dollars in federal funds Thursday as Ottawa kicks off International Polar Year.

Researchers studying the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice to global warming will get at least $10 million to extend and launch new studies, sources told The Canadian Press. Arctic population health projects led by specialists at Laval University in Quebec will also receive a lion's share of federal funds worth a total of $150 million, sources say.

Final selections from among hundreds of proposed studies will be announced Thursday at the Museum of Civilization.

An ice span the size of Lake Superior - about 70,000 square kilometres - is disappearing from the Arctic each year. The prospect of an ice-free Arctic in the next 40 years has profound implications for Inuit health, wildlife, offshore oil and mineral exploration and, ultimately, issues of sovereignty.

In all, more than 50,000 scientists from 63 countries around the world will descend on the Earth's poles to study everything from polar chemistry to contaminants in fish.

Projects will actually be spread over 2007 and 2008 so that researchers can spend two full seasons in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Follow-up analysis is expected to extend four years beyond that.

International Polar Year, held every 50 years, will be officially launched Thursday in Paris. It was last marked when early hints of a warming trend were being noticed at the Earth's far extremes.

Today, there's no mistaking the staggering impact of the global thermometer's slow, steady rise.

"This is something people have to pay attention to," says Dave Barber, a leading sea-ice researcher at the University of Manitoba. "It's a major change that affects the biological system and people."

Losing vast chunks of sea ice is not unlike chopping down huge swaths of rainforest, he explained. Countless marine organisms are affected as intricate ice-dependent biosystems are disrupted. Others flourish in newly opened water, he said.

"The Arctic is an early-warning indicator of what we can expect in the rest of the world."

Barber declined to discuss specific funding in advance of Thursday's announcement, but said he's optimistic.

"These funds would allow us to do more, bigger and more highly integrated programs than we would otherwise."

It's important for Ottawa to take a leadership role, Barber added.

"Canada has the largest Arctic coastline in the world."

International Polar Year means a global spotlight and cash injections, says Stephen Hendrie, spokesman for Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national advocacy group for Canada's Inuit.

"We're pretty pumped up about this. It's a major thing for the Arctic. The IPY is a roadmap for research a decade or two after."

Still, Inuit leaders - several of whom will be in Paris for the official launch - hope their people will be consulted about related projects, Hendrie said.

"Inuit are saying they want to be partners in study."

By the time the next International Polar Year rolls around, they hope Inuit scientists will lead much of the research, he said.

Source: Canadian Press

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