Tears were streaming down the Saami reindeer herder’s face as he unexpectedly stood up to speak to the “talking circle” of elders. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) Chair Robert Corell listened as the herder’s fear, confusion and helplessness were exposed. He may be the last reindeer herder in his family, he said.
For generation after generation, the Saami peoples of northern Norway have built their livelihood around herding reindeer. The majority of the region’s estimated 200,000 semi-domesticated reindeer live in the reindeer moss-rich pasturelands of Norway. Today, the impacts of climate change are threatening the way of life for both the reindeer and their Saami herders.
“The Saami people and their reindeer have migrated across these ranges through millennia and withstood the changes in government, kings, and even invasions,” says Christian Nellemann, a leading Norwegian expert on the impact of climate change and on the Saami people.
“Climate change is hitting these people and animals severely.”
Nellemann explains that the reindeer are able to smell the reindeer moss—also called lichen—through several feet of snow. This snow-covered lichen accounts for seventy percent of the reindeers’ diet. In recent times, however, the Norwegian pasturelands have been hit by winter rains and frequent freeze/thaw cycles. With several centimetres of ice covering the lichen, the reindeer can’t reach it and consequently starve.
Susan Hassol, author of the ACIA report entitled Impacts of a Warming Arctic, interpreted the work of over 300 world-renowned scientists. “The species, vegetation, wildlife, and the indigenous peoples in the Arctic are unique and have evolved for thousands of years in a very cold climate and they depend on the cold for survival.”
In the last thirty to forty years, scientists estimate that Arctic has warmed up by about 1°C on average—twice the rate of any other place on earth. There are also regional variations; Alaska, Chukotka, and some parts of western Canada are even warmer, gradually approaching 6°C, says Corell.
Although some natural factors may be at play in raising the temperatures (some believe that the world is still emerging from the last ice age, for example), “greenhouse” gases like carbon dioxide are also playing a big role.
“We put about 6 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year through burning fossil fuels and that atmospheric concentration goes up by three billion,” explains Gordon McBean, a leading Canadian contributor to the ACIA report. The ever-increasing carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases will remain suspended in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
One way that global warming can most easily be observed is through the change in the Albedo—the amount of sunlight being reflected by the earth’s surface. Snow and ice have as much as a 90 percent Albedo—reflecting most of the sunlight that hits it, just like a mirror. Other surfaces, like rock, forest, or ocean, have lower Albedos and absorb more light. As global warming shrinks glaciers and melts ice and snow, Albedo rates decrease. In some parts of the Canadian arctic and in western Canada’s mountain ranges, the earth is reflecting up to 6 percent less sunlight than it did 20 years ago. With less sunlight getting reflected back into space and more of it being absorbed by the earth, temperatures rise by as much as a few degrees in some areas.
So, what’s a few degrees, you ask? Some scientists have predicted that the average global temperature could increase by 5°C by sometime mid-century. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but even a minor change can lead to a runaway effect. As temperature increases, polar ice and glaciers melt, and more water is evaporated into our atmosphere. Water—which has enabled life to flourish on our planet—also happens to be the deadliest greenhouse gas, warming our planet far more dramatically than CO 2 .
With all this rapid warming, the arctic permafrost is melting away, resulting in depleting coastlines. This also means a shorter window for travel in the arctic tundra, since most travel is over the ice. Later winter freezing and an earlier spring thaw means that peoples in the arctic have had their travel days cut almost in half from thirty years ago. This disrupts the transportation of food and water and industrial work.
The melting sea ice and its increasingly northward movement have dire consequences for people and species such as the ringed seal and polar bear, inter-dependent on sea ice for survival.
“Some climate models are predicting summer sea ice could disappear by the middle of this century with profound implications for the ecosystem, exploration, and sovereignty of nations,” says McBean.
Andrew Derocher, chair of the International Polar Bear Specialist Group, says that roughly two thirds of the estimated 25,000 polar bears living in Canada’s north are indirectly impacted by climate change.
Although there is no shortage of ringed seals—the polar bear’s staple food—there is a problem that there is simply “no time to eat,” says Derocher.
Polar bears don’t catch their prey in the water. Rather, they hunt on the ice, as they are far more effective on their feet. Polar bears feed for only three months of the year (from April to June), and store the seal fat for the rest of the year. With the sea ice disappearing, the bears can’t catch enough seals during the feeding season. To make matters worse, the bears must travel longer distances for winter, burning more fat. Female bears often don’t have sufficient fat reserves to become pregnant, resulting in a fast-depleting bear population. The Inuit are “painfully aware” that their traditional hunting is threatened, says Derocher.
Polar bears aren't the only species affected by the changing arctic landscape; animals, birds, and vegetation native to the south are moving northward, disrupting the northern ecosystems. Birch trees are growing in the Arctic, the brown fox is encroaching on the Arctic fox habitat, and even robins—a bird for which the Inuit have no name—can now be found in the far north.
Next week: How southern “development” is ruining the north.