The Arctic has become a concentration of the major issues of the moment. Global warming, new resources, maritime routes and geopolitical rivalries meet in this region of the Far North, long difficult to access and today in full transformation.
The region has notably been brought to the forefront by the ambitions recently displayed by Donald Trump regarding Greenland. But the issue is also climatic: the Arctic is one of the regions of the world where the effects of warming are the fastest and most visible.
Why is the Arctic warming faster than the rest of the planet?
The Arctic Ocean is warming three to four times faster than the global average, in particular because of albedo, which is "the ability to reflect solar radiation", explains Marcel Babin, Canadian oceanographer, specialist in the region and scientific director of the Polaris 1 expedition, which has just started in this Arctic Ocean, aboard the drifting station deployed by the Tara Ocean Foundation.
Snow and ice reflect much of this radiation. When they melt, they leave more room for the ocean and land surfaces, which absorb more heat. “The less ice there is, the more the ocean and the atmosphere warm up. The more they warm up, the more the ice melts,” explains Marcel Babin. “There is a kind of vicious circle that causes melting and temperature increase to accelerate together.”
Arctic sea ice is melting more and more quickly
This acceleration of global warming is reflected in particular by a reduction in the pack ice, this portion of frozen sea around the North Pole.
Since the first scientific surveys in 1979, observations show a reduction of more than 10% per decade in the area of the sea ice during the summer months. This represents the equivalent of five times the surface area of France which has disappeared in less than 50 years. At this rate, researchers estimate that permanent ice could completely disappear from the Arctic during the warmer months, between 2040 and 2050.
A scientific expedition to better understand the changes
It is to document these transformations that the Tara Ocean Foundation launched the Polaris 1 expedition. A drifting station was deployed in the Arctic Ocean to collect data on this rapidly changing environment. Scientists will notably study the evolution of the ecosystem and the species that live there. The Tara Ocean Foundation plans to continue this research for around twenty years, in order to follow the transformations of the Arctic throughout the seasons, in summer and winter.
This knowledge should make it possible to better inform political decisions in the face of future changes.
New knowledge
This ocean which is gradually freeing itself from ice, these coastal areas which no longer freeze in summer, are new resources which can be exploited, underground or underwater.
A moratorium currently exists on fishing in the central Arctic, a part of the ocean that occupies the North Pole and whose waters can reach more than 4,000 meters deep. “We are going to collect a lot of data concerning the ecosystem and in particular the fish, their diversity, their life, which will fuel the reflections around this moratorium, its possible continuation,” explains Marcel Babin.
New maritime routes between Asia and Europe
The melting of the sea ice is also gradually making navigation in certain parts of the Arctic easier. Commercial and tourist ships can sail freely, or almost, in certain areas for part of the year, taking advantage of more accessible and shorter maritime routes. This summer, China opened the first regular maritime line between Asia and Europe passing through the Polar Circle.
Traffic is still in its infancy, but its development could have significant consequences on the Arctic environment, in particular an increase in the risk of pollution.
For European countries, these new maritime routes therefore constitute both an economic opportunity and a strategic challenge.
