University of Manitoba to Carry Out Canada’s Largest Int’L Polar Year Project

By MICHELLE MACAFEE

WINNIPEG (CP) – About 40 scientists from the University of Manitoba are preparing for one of the largest research projects ever to be conducted in the Arctic.

The university will lead a 14-country team of 200 researchers, who will spend a year studying northern ice to learn more about the impact of climate change.

The study was to be announced Thursday in Ottawa as part of the International Polar Year, which is being officially launched in Paris.

Several other Canadian universities and projects will share $150 million in federal funding, but the U of M project will be the biggest in Canada and one of the largest in the world.

The study will focus on the cracks in the Arctic ice caused when the ice pulls away from land.

The cracks leave open water earlier than anywhere else in the region, allowing sunlight in to stimulate biological activity, said Dave Barber, one of the lead researchers.

“They become like an oasis in the desert,” he said.

“They’re biologically very active because there’s this energy that’s driving the ecosystem, and that allows us to look at what the Arctic is going to look like in the very near future.”

This is the fourth International Polar Year, which is held every 50 years.

Sea ice is disappearing at a rate of about 70,000 square kilometres a year, an area the size of Lake Superior. At that pace, the Arctic will be ice-free by 2050, which would have implications for the Inuit and polar bears, as well as for shipping and offshore oil and mineral development.

There is also political interest in the U of M study, since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea requires Canada to define its continental margins in the Arctic.

“We’ve never done this before, so we’re not sure exactly what areas are attached to our continent so that we can lay claim to mineral development and oil development on those areas,” said Barber.

Researchers will study everything from sediment on the ocean floor to the atmosphere. They’ll use as their base a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker that has been retrofitted as a research vessel.

The work is to begin in October and continue until August 2008 and will mark the first time an icebreaker will stay in the Arctic for all four seasons. The Inuit will also participate by monitoring ice conditions and combining that information with their own historical observations. Barber said they’ve had to come up with new words in Inuktitut for previously foreign words like “sunburn” and “bumblebees.”

Gary Stern, who is co-leading the U of M project with Barber, said he’s excited to be working with so many scientists in so many areas of specialty all in one place.

He said the research will also having more practical applications further south.

“Most people think the Arctic is a long way away; it doesn’t really affect their lives.

“But now they’re seeing more storms, they’re seeing more flooding, warmer winters, more precipitation, so they’re starting to feel what effects climate change is starting to have on their lives.”