Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future

by Neil Shubin

As predicted by Mercer and other glaciologists, the loss of the shelves led to an increased flow of ice into the sea. The rate of flow increased from fourfold to eightfold. That amount of flow is not a huge problem for sea-level rise because the peninsula is a thin strip of land with no major ice sheets inside. That’s the good news: the Larsen ice shelves do not hold back much ice. The bad news is that there are other ice shelves that hold back enough ice to raise global sea levels by over 16 feet in a single century.

A series of six glaciers, including Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, hold back ice streams of the West Antarctic from flowing into the ocean. Thwaites is the largest of these glaciers that serve as barriers. If Thwaites melted entirely, then global sea levels would rise about 2 feet. But if the shrinkage of Thwaites led to the collapse of the entire West Antarctic Ice Shelf, then the ice streams would flow into the ocean and sea levels might rise as high as 16 feet.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet has more surface area than the entire continent of North America, whereas the one in Greenland is about the size of the state of Texas.

Nobody had looked at the ocean floor underneath a glacier before. Series of parallel ridges about 10 to 70 centimeters tall extended along the seafloor, regularly spaced from one another almost as if somebody had carved them. The ridges extended from the end of the glacier into the seafloor and ran parallel to the edge of the glacier. This is a part of the ocean that lacked any currents that could feasibly have sculpted these features.

Antarctic ice typically doesn’t melt from the top—it melts from below, where the ice meets the ocean. As the oceans warm, Antarctica’s surface temperatures stay relatively cool. This disparity in temperature amplifies a wind current, the so-called westerlies that circle the southern part of the globe. By pushing the water, these winds accelerate the famed circumpolar current that swirls around Antarctica. This current carries 170 times more water than all of the Earth’s rivers combined. And with that water comes the heat it holds.

The last ice age ended 12,000 years ago when the ice sheets that covered much of Europe and northern North America receded.

the work of Dansgaard, Oeschger, and Heinrich, cores in the ice and seafloor can be extremely precise, revealing histories that can even record seasonal changes hundreds of thousands years ago. The most detailed records from cores extend to about 400,000 years ago. When changes in temperature, sea levels, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are plotted onto the same graph, the rise and fall of each variable are intimately linked; changes in one are linked to changes in each of the others. Temperatures have wiggled up and down about 6 degrees Celsius during this time. With the changes in temperatures came the rise and fall of sea levels. The fact that sea levels rise and falls along with temperature surprised nobody.

As temperatures ranged over 6 degrees Celsius for the past 400,000 years, sea levels varied by almost 360 feet. When scientists plot temperature against sea-level rise over the last 400,000 years, they get a straight line—for every 1 degree Celsius of temperature rise, there was nearly 60 feet of sea-level rise. But if we look at the current situation on that graph, there is a disconnect: For our current global temperature, we sit at a relatively low level of ocean, based on data from the past. The position of this point on the graph means that as the globe adjusts to the very recent increases in temperature, sea levels will inevitably rise over time. Studies of the past predict that if we do nothing to lower temperatures, sea levels will rise by 120 feet in coming centuries. How fast this rise happens is anybody’s guess, but change in coastlines and the oceans is, to pardon the pun, already baked in.

were able to map where and how much ice has been lost across all of Antarctica since 1979. Ice mass loss per year from 1979 to 1990 was about 40 gigatons per year. In the following decade, that number increased to 50 gigatons per year. Then, the rates took off: 166 gigatons from 1999 to 2000, then 252 gigatons per year from 2002 to 2017. The loss happened in both East and West Antarctica, but mostly in specific places in each region.

focused satellites on Greenland to see how the ice there is holding up. Looking at 206 glaciers in images from 1972 to 2018, they found that Greenland shifted from gaining ice, on the order of 47 gigatons per year from 1972 to 1980, to losing ice every decade afterward—51 gigatons in the 1990s, 187 gigatons in the 2000s, and 286 gigatons in the 2010s. All of this water drained off of Greenland, and this has raised global sea levels by half an inch during this time, mostly in the last eight years.

the rate of ice loss is steadily increasing. Antarctica is now melting about 150 billion tons of ice per year, and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year. And this freshwater all flows into the ocean.

its 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report. Sea levels rose 6 inches in the past century. In the next thirty years, the levels are projected to rise nearly 1 foot, rising more on some coasts, less on others.

“Its” = NOAA.

predictions differ among analyses. One study projects that sea levels could rise as much as 10 feet globally in the next century if the planet warms more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit. But this alarming prediction stands in contrast to a less dramatic one that envisions 4.5 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.

The month of April is one where I can cite an example of the changes, perhaps by many other Inuit. The month is generally used for the Toonik Time spring festivities. It was towards the end of the month when the festivities were held prior to the new century, but these last few years, due to earlier spring, the festivities have to be moved up by two weeks,” said Jacapoosie Pete from Iqualuit.

On Bastille Day in 2023 the French icebreaking cruise ship Le Commandant Charcot arrived at the North Pole with a band playing “La Marseillaise.” The author described passengers, outfitted in matching parkas, idling at the pole: “After an hour of taking selfies and building snow igloos in the icescape, with temperatures in the relatively balmy low 30s, we head back into our heated sanctuary for mulled wine and freshly baked croissants. Mission accomplished. Flags planted. Now, lunch.”

the group discovered that the Arctic has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world since 1979.

Finnish research team.

On June 20, 2021, two European satellites recorded a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit on the ground in the Arctic of Siberia. That same summer, hundreds of wildfires scorched the Siberian countryside and blackened villages with smoke. These so-called zombie fires were the rekindled remains of fires from the previous year. With carbon-rich peat underground, the fires had smoldered for months under the ice. The following month, in July 2021, three successive thunderstorms formed in the Arctic. Typically lacking the heat needed to generate thunderstorms, the Arctic is usually free of them. But since 2010 the incidents of summer lightning there have tripled. In recent years, lightning even has struck within 60 miles of the North Pole.

The lack of ice cover means new areas will be open for fishing, mineral extraction, and oil and gas exploration. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas resources and 13 percent of conventional oil lie in the Arctic. Lithium to power batteries and rare-earth metals for silicon chips are thought to lie in the seafloor as well. Formerly remote and largely inaccessible places will be open for business.

the Arctic has some of the most extensive undeclared borders among nation states in the world. Vast areas under the polar ice have yet to be claimed. For the Arctic, what’s at stake is not just a dot of land—now we’re talking about a country’s claims to the entire region under the polar ice cap, including the North Pole itself. And one of the tools countries have used to stake these bold claims is science and the scientific enterprise itself.

Scientific research has played an important but very different role in national interest at the poles. In the Antarctic, science became the only legal reason for countries to have a presence on the continent. In the Arctic, the role of science was subtler. As with the Apollo program, the development of science in the Arctic was as much a story of national interest and geopolitics as it was one of curiosity to discover more about the natural world and cosmos.

Fortier published a boxed set of maps and scientific papers that revealed its geology in detail for the first time. The maps unfold as illustrations that have color codes for the types of rocks contained in each area; for example, green for Cretaceous rocks, yellow for Jurassic layers, and purple for Devonian Age ones. The beauty of the maps belies their significance. They are the entrée for scientists like me to study the region. To find a fossil fish that is close to the ancestry of land-living creatures—a fish with arms—we zeroed in on regions colored purple.

In 1957, swept up by the success of Operation Franklin, the Canadian government established permanent scientific infrastructure in the Arctic. Scientific bases in polar regions were hot commodities at the time. Russia’s Vostok, the United States’ McMurdo, and other countries’ outposts on Antarctica also sprung into existence. Resolute Bay became Canada’s main hub in the Arctic.

Outfitted with small huts to serve as dormitories and communication stations—and the dirt runway—Resolute Bay became the hub for logistic operations in the area. Still in existence, it supports research on subjects ranging from polar bear ecology to archaeology. For six decades since its founding, this effort has grown to support teams from around the world. My team discovered the fishapod, Tiktaalik roseae, with this support.

Standing a little under five-three, Dawson was a force of nature. She was renowned for her hardy approach to challenges in the field. Once on Ellesmere Island, she and a colleague were hunting for fossils along a rocky hillside set along a broad valley. The two noticed six white dots meandering in their general direction. As the images came closer, it became obvious that these were six Arctic wolves on the hunt. Stalking the two paleontologists, the wolves ultimately encircled them. The alpha wolf charged Dawson, leaping for her face. Dawson stood her ground, spread her arms, and let out a cry at the airborne wolf. The animal dropped to the ground, turned, and walked away from Dawson and her companion, occasionally gazing back at them as it retreated. The other five wolves followed. Some of the alpha wolf’s saliva remained on Dawson’s cheek.

Science and national sovereignty are intertwined by the Law of the Sea. By international law, nations are entitled to the resources based on the position of their continental shelf. Continental margins extend under the sea as a shallow shelf before diving to the depths of the ocean. Countries are entitled to exclusive rights to the seafloor 200 miles beyond this feature. If a nation can show that a shelf is part of its continent, that country then owns the seafloor and everything inside of it—all the minerals, oil, and natural gas. The waters would remain open for navigation and fishing, but the extraction of resources would be restricted.

The seafloor underneath the Arctic Ocean, as well as the North Pole itself, is now a quilt overlapping claims.

With the arrival of Europeans, and encroachment on lands, Inuit began to assert land claims and organize. In 1969, the Canadian government proposed to abolish all Inuit treaties’ land claims. The ensuing outcry, activism, and litigation ultimately landed in the Canadian Supreme Court, which ruled in 1973 that Inuit land claims are legitimate. This decision led to negotiations among Inuit communities, the Canadian federal government, and other bodies where land claims were formally established. Four regions were ultimately recognized, with the largest one, Nunavut, gaining its own legislature and becoming Canada’s newest federal unit in 1999.

The first settlers of Newtok, Alaska, had to squint to see the rivers in the distance. With melt every summer, the adjacent river started to get closer and closer to the village. Concerned about the pace of the river’s erosion, the village received funding in 1983 to assess the changes happening to the land around the village. Comparison of aerial photos taken over the course of thirty years revealed that the bank around town was losing between 18 and 88 feet per year.

The subterranean ice, often embedded with ancient tundra, peat, debris, and organic matter, can be as much as 5,000 feet thick in Siberia. In Alaska, it can be 2,000 feet thick and gets thinner toward the south.

When organic matter thaws from the ice, microbial action generates methane and other greenhouse gases, which ultimately get pushed into the atmosphere. This activity is a source of carbon that can rival the burning of fossil fuels by humans. Within the permafrost is one of the largest carbon reservoirs on the planet. By some estimates there is more than twice the carbon locked within permafrost than there is in the atmosphere. Changing permafrost sets off another feedback loop—melting ice and permafrost release carbon into the atmosphere, which, in turn, causes more warming.

The DNA analysis shows that polar bears alive today have less genetic diversity than their ancestors. This change inside the genome means that the bears may have fewer genetic resources to enable them to respond to environmental fluctuations. Modern polar bears may have limited ways to adapt in the future.

Scientists estimate that orcas will soon be the Arctic’s top predator, replacing the polar bear.