the explorers journal the climate change issue - The Explorers Club

exploring climate change No. 4
h e a d i n g
north
with
Will Steger
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “There are no second
acts in American lives,” but then the great American
writer never met Will Steger. Over the period of a
decade from 1986 to 1996, Steger completed the
first confirmed, unresupplied dogsled journey
to the North Pole; traversed Greenland; crossed
Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean by dogsled; and
was named the first Explorer-in-Residence by the
National Geographic Society. Steger’s “second act”
has focused on education. He founded the Global
Center for Environmental Education at Hamline
interview by Jeff Stolzer
University and the World School for Adventure
Learning at the University of St. Thomas. He also
founded the Will Steger Foundation, launching the
Global Warming 101 initiative to raise broad public
awareness about global warming as witnessed
through his polar expeditions.
Managing Editor Jeff Stolzer recently spoke to
Steger about the Global Warming 101 Expedition
(www.globalwarming101.com), a 1,900-kilometer
dogsled traverse of Canada’s Baffin Island, which
he completed in May of this year.
head shot by Jim Paulson, dogteam photo by John Huston
JS: One of the goals of the expedition was to visit
Inuit living in remote villages and learn about their
experience with climate change. What did the
Inuit share with you?
WS: We traveled with three Inuit hunters who are all
in their 50s or 60s, men who were born in igloos or
huts. They were nomadic and had a traditional culture
when they were young, so they have seen all
the changes. We also interviewed more than 100
hunters, elders, and women in the villages to get
their input. We were able to see the surroundings
through their eyes so we got quite a bit of feedback
on the expedition. It is remarkable how fast things
are changing up there. The Inuit are basically marine
people who rely on the sea ice to hunt walrus, seal,
and fish. In some areas they do hunt caribou, but
the sea ice is really their hunting platform and also
their means of transportation. They told us how the
reduction of sea ice by almost a third over the past
year alone has affected their culture.
The Inuit are noticing much
later freeze-ups, anywhere
from six weeks to two months,
and then earlier break-ups. In
the area that we traveled in,
the sea ice would normally be
around for about nine months
out of the year, but it’s now
reduced to six months. Losing
the sea ice, especially the summer sea ice, is real
bad news for any animals like the walrus and polar
bear that live on the sea ice, or a human being that
relies on it for hunting.
JS: What signs of global warming did you personally
witness on your recent expedition?
WS: The ice in Cumberland Sound—a large sound
about 80 kilometers across and 190 kilometers
long—had totally broken up at the end of January,
which the Inuit hunters in that area said they had
never seen before. We normally would have crossed
that sound to get to the village of Pangnirtung but
we had to go around. It wasn’t a major deal but it
cost us an extra three days and then after we went
around it, another storm came in and broke up the
ice that we had just traveled on. It was also very obvious
that the glaciers are in rapid retreat up there.
Another thing we noticed was that in some areas
thaws in the springtime and the summer and the
snow is melting all the way down to the ground and
then freezing solid in the winter, which is impacting
the lemming population, which thrives under the
snow, where its warm. Small rodents, lemmings
are the basic food for the wolf, the fox, to some
extent the wolverine, and almost entirely for the
snowy owl. In areas where the lemming population
is dropping, you have fox and wolf populations that
are competing directly with the polar bear, because
they’re now going after the ring seals. So when you
have one section of the food chain caving in, it
affects the entire system because the chain is so
delicate. And the Inuit kept pointing that out to us,
very clearly. When it affects one, it affects all.
But it is actually a lot more serious than that,
because we are starting to upset the heat balance
on the globe. Eighty percent of the extra heat that
is now being captured on the surface of the globe
because of human-induced global warming is being
added to the ocean. So the whole ocean is warming
and the sea level rise is probably due to this thermal
expansion of the warming ocean.
This is being played out in the
Arctic, where we are starting to
lose sea ice. In the summer we
used to have ice on the Arctic
Ocean in that northern area
that would reflect 99 percent of
the energy of the sun back into
the atmosphere. Now, with the
thawing of the ice, you’re getting exposed water and
ground, which is a darker surface. That absorbs up
to 96 percent of the sun’s energy. It’s like the difference
on a hot sunny day between wearing a white
t-shirt and a black t-shirt. That’s what is happening
up north now, and that’s why we’re seeing this rapid
change that is three to five times faster than down
here.
JS: Did you find evidence of global warming everywhere
on your expedition or was it a more localized
phenomenon?
WS: It differs from region to region. Global warming
isn’t a blanket warming of the Earth—some
areas are actually getting colder. We saw that
on Baffin Island. In some areas, there were much
stronger winds in the fall. And they never had
thawing weather before. As a result the snow was
really hard-packed or iced up. And that affected
the caribou—there was virtually no game in that
38 the explorers journal