Update: September 27, 2006 
SAILING TO THE NORTH POLE?
By Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond. 

I read a chilling (you’ll pardon the pun) news item the other day.  It quoted Dr, James McCarthy, an oceanographer who was aboard a Russian icebreaker.  He said that the ship found a large expanse of water and not ice at the North Pole.  "It was totally unexpected," he said.

Another scientist on the cruise, paleontologist Dr Malcolm C McKenna, said the ship was able to sail all the way to the North Pole through only a thin crust of ice, and arrived on the spot to discover no ice at all.
"I don't know if anybody in history ever got to 90 degrees north to be greeted by water, not ice," Dr McKenna was quoted as saying.

The scientists say the ice cap in the whole area was so thin that the ship had to sail for another six miles to find ice thick enough for the passengers to leave the boat and walk on the ice cap, as they had been promised.

The unusual gap in the ice was also noted by satellites of the European Space Agency who reported that a warm summer and late storms in the past few months briefly opened a channel in the Arctic ice big enough to allow a ship to sail to the North Pole.  The agency said satellite images showed "dramatic openings" over an area bigger than the British Isles in the Arctic's sea ice, which normally stays frozen all year. There have also been reports of polar bears drowning because they can find no ice to rest on and unknown islands appearing in Greenland and Canada from their previously permanent icy shrouds.

Current Arctic Sea Ice Boundary and the boundary in 1979 (in red)

Unlike the South Pole, which is on land, Earth’s North Pole is on a permanently frozen ice cap over water.  At least it has been permanently frozen for millennia, but that’s obviously all changing.  Because the ice moves and changes, there are no permanently inhabited bases at the North Pole as there are in Antarctica at the South Pole.

The scientists in Antarctica have been telling us for years that there are big changes occurring at the South Pole.  Icebergs are calving from the flanks of Antarctica that are not only bigger than Guam; they’re bigger than several of the smallest states!  Giant rivers of water undercut massive ice shelves and there is a lot of ice on Antarctica’s edges that is in danger of sliding into the sea.

But there are no permanent habitations in the very far north and we’re only beginning to discover the huge changes occurring there.  And ice melt in the far north will have much more direct consequences for many of the inhabitants of planet Earth for a very simple reason.  The Gulf Stream.

There’s a huge river of water that flows in the world ocean.  Benjamin Franklin was one of the first people to recognize there was a warm current of water that flowed up the east coast of North America; rounded south of Greenland and Iceland and warmed the British Isles and Europe.  Most people are amazed when they learn that London is only slightly farther south than Juneau Alaska and that sunny Rome shares its latitude with Chicago.  The warmth provided by the Gulf Stream has had a big impact on world history.

Scientists discovered another warming current called the Kuroshio Current that flows in the western Pacific and performs the same warming for Japan that the Gulf Stream provides for Europe.  Then, they discovered that it’s all the same current that transports warm waters from the tropics to the cooler waters of the polar regions in the world ocean.  The cooled water then sinks down to the ocean bottom and flows back to the tropics where the Sun’s heat warms the ocean surface to keep the great current flowing.

This “ocean conveyor belt” has been running since the end of the last Ice Age. But heat from global warming is melting the Arctic Ocean’s ice into fresh water, which flows into the salty North Atlantic.
The danger is that this fresh water may dilute the salty current of the Gulf Stream so much that it stops sinking down into the ocean depths near Iceland.  If the Gulf Stream stops, there’ll be nothing pushing the deep cold river at the bottom of the North Atlantic.  As the Atlantic portion of the ocean conveyor belt grinds to a halt, then Europe could indeed freeze ‚ ironically, as a direct result of global warming.  But that’s not the only problem.
	Great Ocean Conveyor Belt

Global warming could interfere with not just the North Atlantic currents, but may disrupt the entire system of ocean currents ‚ affecting the entire world's weather.

Sailing to the North Pole?  I think we’d all be a lot better off if it weren’t possible.  Sail on over to our web site www.thedeepradioshow.com for more on global warming.