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Amundsen sets sail to measure climate change

Scientists travel Northwest Passage in quest for answers about currents, temperature

SARA MINOGUE

Canadian Research Icebreaker CCGS Amundsen samples in a fjord off Baffin Island. (PHOTO COURTESY OF ARCTICNET)

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At 10 a.m. last Friday, the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, the Amundsen, set sail from Quebec City for another season of Arctic research that will take 40 crew and some 42 scientists across almost the entire coastal Canadian Arctic.

Scientists aboard the ship this year will set up a series of ocean observatories as they sail through the Northwest Passage and back again.

Climate change is what's driving the interest in the Arctic.

"We're in monitoring mode," says Martin Fortier, the executive director of ArcticNet, based at Université Laval in Quebec City. "Really, to witness the change."

As of Monday, the Amundsen was in the St. Lawrence River on its way to the Labrador Sea where the first sampling will begin.

The ship will make its first stop in Pond Inlet in mid-August - this stop isn't for research purposes, but because the scientists will have to get off of the metal ship in order to calibrate instruments to the North Magnetic Pole.

From Pond Inlet, the ship heads further North until it reaches a polynya at about the latitude of Grise Fiord. Then, researchers will begin setting up four ocean observatories, three in Canadian waters and one in Danish waters.

Each "observatory" consists of a vertical mooring line, fitted with instruments that monitor temperature and currents and collect biological information. Each line is held in place with floats that begin below the ocean's surface so they remain out of the way.

Another observatory, moored in Smith Sound at the top of Baffin Bay, will measure the flow of water out of the Arctic Ocean.

"The purpose of the observatories is to collect data while we're not there," Fortier said.

Each instrument can be set to capture information as often as needed: for example, every hour for an entire year. The data can later be retrieved when the ship returns.

Around August 23, nearly three weeks into the voyage, the ship should be entering the Lancaster Sound on its way through the Northwest Passage, where four more observatories will be installed.

Also in that region, researchers will begin to take sediment samples by drilling cores.

The 10-metre long cores are "just like a tree ring," Fortier says, in which scientists can read the history of plant and algae life, and deduce weather patterns over the last several thousand years.

Equipment on the ship itself will monitor the biomass of fish and zooplankton, and map the ocean's floor as it sails through Arctic waters.

By August 29, the crew will be ready for a small crew change in Cambridge Bay before heading into the Beaufort Sea to set up more observatories, and study the results from observatories installed in 2002.

After two weeks in the Western Arctic, the entire crew and most of the scientists will jump ship at Kugluktuk, to be replaced by fresh crew members and researchers who will journey with the ship back East, this time to Hudson Bay via the Hudson Strait, where researchers will begin taking samples around the third week of September.

Along the way, the ship will pick up 10 students participating in its Schools on Board program, which offers a 10-day experience for budding scientists. The ship also includes two inuit elders from the NWT as part of the Fisheries Joint Management mentoring program. Both will participate in scientific research throughout the journey.

The Amundsen, which first set sail as a dedicated science platform in the fall of 2003, is just one of several programs being co-ordinated through ArcticNet, an umbrella research project that involves some 250 researchers from around the world.

That includes social scientists and health scientists who are researching the impact of climate change on the environment and human health.

The project has funding for seven years, which can be renewed for seven years.

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