APECS_Polarscience

Hi DaymD, this is Stefan from Norway. I was out sampling on the Norwegian island Svalbard/ Spitzbergen, which is in the high Arctic and I was also part of a cruise going to the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. During these times I have seen a few "dire" situations directly. This was mostly trash in the ocean and on the island. But this is probably not the "dire situation" you look for. In terms of climate change, this is pretty hard to see, especially if you only go once. When we went out on the Barents Sea, the sea ice was fairly far North. This means, it was a year with low total sea ice. But is that an effect of climate change? It could also be an anomaly of this particular year. So only by talking to the captain and the older scientists on board, who all had been there a few times over the last years and decades, revealed that the ice used to be further South. That is an indicator, but it is also what we call "anecdotal evidence". This means, single people saw something, but did not measure it scientifically. So in the end, we need to go back to sea ice charts and models and check what really happens over a long time to actually see the effect of climate change. But if we do, yes, there is less ice in the Arctic. A similar example would be glaciers, where you can see where the have been 10-20-30 years back and measure the decline. Glacier Gray in Patagonia (Chile) is a good example here. I hope that answers your question.

Heisann,

that is a really cool question, and I had to think about it.

Myth: The Gulf Stream will stop and we will all freeze to death. Well, the Gulf Stream is slowing and we might eventually see it stopping, but not within a day. New York, you are save in this respect. Interestingly, a similar thing was found in the Southern Ocean recently: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65120327

Another myth: The ice is dead. While glacier ice is pretty dense and only a few pretty bad ass microbes manage to life in there (snow algae, etc.), sea ice is pretty porous and a lof of stuff lives in the small channels. Fish, crustaceans, a whole array of planktonic critters, and of course my beloved microbes as well. But as so often, we know very little about it.

Fact: There are many things that deserve more attention. i think most people finally got this climate change thing and the melting of the ice etc. and that it is not a good thing. But what many people don't talk about is e.g. the effect on arctic communities. The change in the environment, especially with less snow and ice, can have severe impacts on the locals that traditionally life under these conditions and need them, e.g. to get their lifestock to the summer pastures by crossing a frozen river. The river is not frozen anymore and they have to change their lifes completely.

Another fact: Changes in the spring timing. I just recently read that in some regions spring is now on average nearly three weeks earlier (not this year in Norway though...). This means, plants are blossoming earlier, insects hatch earlier, but the larger animals, like birds, might still come late from their winter quarters. They lay eggs, but the peak insect season is over when they hatch, so what to feed the young ones on? This is just one example, it is probably similar for many animals and plants, which phase changes in the annual rhythm. This could get problematic, but i haven't seen much attention to it.

Hei,

1) Personally, there are three things that surprised me in polar science.

A) How many people actually are working in polar science. I thought it was far less, since it always sounded that only a few chosen once do this stuff. But there are actually many. I might be biased by being in Norway though and here is a strong polar focus.

B) How tough the environment is. Here I talk not about the Arctic, I talk about the research environment/ the academic work environment. It is apparently a very relevant topic, but still there is little funding or jobs.

C) How little respect people have for our work and the facts we produce. It is just that very often you run into people that don't trust the specialists. I mean, if a medical doctor says you have cancer, you trust that person right? If a doctor in bio/physics/geo tells you the earth has cancer, you ignore it and claim some wild stuff you heard from your neighbor is true? Pretty stunning.

​

About the man made material, I guess you mostly mean plastics. However, the answers would be (mostly) true for chemicals and other materials too. It is pretty frightening to see, but so far, we know very little about it and the effects, especially in polar regions. So this is a bit tough to answer, since we don't even know how much is out there. Let's start at the micro scale.

The microbial world is probably not much affected directly by microplastic in the sense that they die. Here, microplastic could only provide a vector for the transport of microbes, but also fish and mollusk larvae etc. across the oceans. Many organisms and organism states prefer an attached lifestyle. This means they stick to stuff. This stuff floats around and degrades...or not if it is microplastic. So the microplastic carries these organisms around the world, which can lead to the spread of disease (unlikely) and invasive species (more likely).

On the other micro scale, this would be the uptake of microplastic into organisms. There, it is known that we find plastic in fish and crustaceans, which then find their way to some peoples tables. So there is an uptake into higher organisms. What the microplastic does there and how the effects are, is not well known (at least to me), but i am fairly sure it is not a beneficial effect. Alarming was the recent finding of nanoplastics in human blood. This means, it is at the core of where it can get and this for sure will not be good for us...or any other organism that has these particles in their blood.

On the macro scale, the classic example are sea birds, whos stomachs are full of plastic and they starve to death. Google "plastic and sea birds" and you get hundrets of pictures. And what is true for birds, it is true for all other marine critters. Fish, turtles, whales, all found with plastic in their stomachs. So this has a huge impact. Ghost nets would be the next higher category then, which are known to still fish and by that kill a lot of sea life. Unfortunately, relicts of the fishing industry are the most abundant plastic pieces found on the open ocean, so their impact is large. Sorry, I don't have numbers here, but this should be easy to google.

And on the global scale, this is happening everywhere, so it happens also in polar regions. And on a time scale, this will only get worse, since the production doesn't stop and plastic doesn't degrade. So it doesn't go away for many hundrets of years. Careful here, some companies claim it degrades, but ask pointy if it just becomes invisible (so microplastic) or if it is really degraded in its chemical compounds. Which in the end means, plastic accumulates and the effects will increase.

This is an excessive topic, so sorry for the rather short answer. For further studies, start here: https://ps.boell.org/en/plastic-atlas

I haven't been to either of both, but I would say South Pole. If only because you can actually see it, the other pole is about 4000m deep in the ocean. But the ice up there is beautiful...

Hei, hei, this is a very interesting question that I have asked myself and haven't come to a proper conclusion. Sorry, bummer first. This might be, because I have been to Antarctica, but not as a tourist, so it is hard to say what exactly happens when they come and how that could impact the environment. A quick google revealed this paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479722002079) which also comes to the conclusion that it is hard to estimate. But lets have a look what I can think about.

So the tourism is by ship, because only very few tourists fly into King Georges Island and hang out there. And since this is the base for most expeditions, their impact in addition to the stations, scientists, military, etc. is probably not really relevant. So ships.

Ships are generally impacting marine life by their noise, movements, and especially by the release (voluntary or not) of trash, oils, gas, paint, etc. into the environment. So this will have an impact. Luckily not soo many companies go to Antarctica s of now, so I believe that the impact of the fishing fleet (especially the illegal ones) are larger. And as far as I understand, there are also very strict regulations for these companies and they use very modern ships.

On land, when the tourists walk around, this is usually in small areas and designated landing bays etc.. There, the impact of the tourists directly can be high, but also very local. Birds nest there and might be disturbed, other animals as well, trash can be left behind, people leave their germs (wild toilets...), and many more things. There I can see an impact, although it is very local.

So in my opinion (and this is an opinion, not fact based now) I think it is not good, but also not the worst we are doing to the white continent right now.