Key Takeaways

Arctic exploration is more feasible due to climate change.
Climate change is threatening traditional Arctic landscapes by melting ice on land and in the ocean.
Exploration is at the micro as well as macro level, with microbial finds and plant history discovery topping the list.

Not only is climate change melting glaciers in the Arctic and negatively impacting sea levels, but reduced sea ice is also challenging polar animals by interfering with the food web, closing down traditional hunting strategies and potentially disrupting ocean phytoplanktons. These effects and an increase in traffic for Arctic exploration are local problems with a global impact.

Conversely, polar exploration also benefits from thawing ice. Increased access to field sites is revealing the historical record of climate cycles, while microbes living deep within the ice give clues to antibiotic resistance and survival tactics.

Arctic Ice at Sea and on Land

The Arctic is defined as the region lying north of the Arctic Circle (66° 34'), where there is no sunset on the summer solstice or sunrise on the winter solstice. The Arctic is also described as the lands north of the tree line, including northern latitudes where summer temperatures do not rise above 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). In this region, ice is found all over the Arctic Ocean or as glaciers or ice caps on the land around its perimeter.

While sea ice melt doesn't contribute to rising ocean levels, water from thawing glaciers and ice caps does. Due to global warming, glaciers are melting at much faster rates. CNN reports that if the whole Greenland ice sheet melts (approximately 1.71 million square kilometers, or 660,000 square miles), sea levels will rise around 7 meters, or 23 feet. But regardless of where it's found, ice coverage in the Arctic can be an obstacle to polar exploration.

Polar Exploration Takes Advantage of Melting Ice

As the ice melts, nations gain easier access to polar exploration. Benefits include safer, faster shipping lanes and easier resource survey and extraction. There's even potential for renewable energy production and sustainable fish harvesting.

Geographical lists energy sources such as oil and gas, in addition to precious and rare earth metals, sparking interest. Untouched fossil fuel reserves here may contain around 22% of the undiscovered but technically accessible deposits globally.

Arctic permafrost — the rock and soil that stays permanently frozen year-round — is also thawing and opening up areas for resource exploration and extraction. However, this is causing problems with infrastructure, such as roads.

Ice Melt Uncovers Historical Climate Records

Ice melt also opens up areas for scientific discovery — researchers have found valuable data as the Arctic ice recedes. Samples need to be quickly collected before warmer conditions destroy the evidence. Columbia Climate School describes ice cores from Greenland that show climate change in the past led to abundant plant life on the island.

These historical plant records show that previous episodes of global warming led to profound changes in vegetation, giving insight into how our planet could respond to climate change. The National Snow and Ice Data Center calls the current conditions "the new abnormal," with less Arctic sea ice and warmer conditions overall.

Cautious Next Steps for Polar Exploration

Researchers have also found microbes alive in thawing ice samples, including 30,000-year-old viruses still capable of infection after their deep freeze. Rising temperatures risk reawakening old diseases. Permafrost contains animal carcasses that didn't get a chance to decompose in sub-zero temperatures, so any disease-causing pathogens can survive and spread when these resurface. Some pathogens, like anthrax, survive long periods of freezing by creating indestructible but infective spores.

CNN postulates that the next pandemic might thaw out from permafrost, reporting on results from a genomic study of samples from Lake Hazen in the arctic that shows virus presence. Awareness of these hazards could help protect workers mining the new resources.

And once reanimated, ancient microbes get busy producing carbon dioxide and methane greenhouse gases. Permafrost thaw also releases toxic metals, such as mercury. The U.S. National Park Service notes that this release of metals and organics is hitting Arctic waterways hard. In addition to quite literally rusting up streams, the materials released from permafrost are driving out fish and other aquatic species by altering water chemistry.

Potential for New Medicine

Columbia Climate School describes finding microbes that have developed characteristics to survive extreme cold. These include new bacteriophages that attack other microbes and bacteria that can digest oil.

Research could also be valuable to medicine. Arctic ice could be an excellent repository for novel genomic material. Even though they haven't been exposed to modern commercial antibiotics, some ancient bacteria contain antimicrobial resistance genes. While this is worrying in terms of potential disease risk, genomic research could benefit from learning about these novel resistance mechanisms and allied virulence factors as targets for new drugs.

Arctic exploration isn't always about adventures at sea and drilling for resources — some of the new finds could be invisible to the naked eye.

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