Ryan: Wow! I have never seen so much ice! It stretches as far as the eye can see!

Morgan: It is pretty impressive and I can never get over how beautiful our ocean of ice really is...

Inukshuk: Beautiful it is. And precious too! Sea ice has a powerful influence over much of our arctic environment. As the ice starts to spread out over vast distances in the fall, it plunges the Arctic into a frigid state until the process is reversed each spring. It's a cycle as regular as the earth's orbit - no coincidence of course!

Ryan: So it's almost as if sea ice had a pulse of its own...

Morgan: Well if it does, I think it's time for a check-up... Many elders in my community say that the ice is not spreading out and receding like it used to. They also say that the spring melt comes much sooner and quicker while the fall freeze happens later. Definitely not good news for hunting and fishing.

Ryan: You could say that the ice has a quicker heart rate!

Inukshuk: I suppose you could say that. In reality, scientists will tell you that recent warming in both the atmosphere and the ocean has significantly changed the rates of growth and decay of sea ice. This means the Arctic Ocean is rapidly losing its ice cover, giving way to a wetter ocean!

Ryan: Does this mean we will soon be able to bathe on the shores of Sachs Harbour or Pond Inlet? I could even become the first person to swim to the North Pole!

Morgan: Sure! If you made it...in a million years maybe... you could keep going to Russia or Scandinavia! Nice places to visit, but I wouldn't want to swim there.

Inukshuk: I don't think you have to worry about calling the Guinness Book of World Records just yet. Current trends suggest the Arctic Ocean will NOT suddenly turn into the Mediterranean Sea! Sea ice is indeed becoming sparser, and the main problem is that the people and animals of the Arctic might not be able to adapt as easily to the coming changes.

Ryan: Could we at least kayak to the North Pole? (Laugh) But seriously, I've heard about an open water route for ships crossing the Northwest Passage... They say that shipping companies have been trying to find a way through there to make it easier to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That would be a strange sight for a solitary polar bear staring out to sea! Come to think of it, what might happen to the bears with all the ice gone?

Morgan: And how about seals and walruses? Are they also in trouble? The last time I was out on the ice with my father and uncles, they told me how rare Nanook had become. It took us days before we could even spot one ... and they seemed so thin!

Inukshuk: If the bears' seal-feeding time on the ice is shortened, they can often go hungry. Because seals follow the ice cover, bears have to travel longer distances to hunt . A major factor in all of this warming and melting threatening people and animals, or even the solution, is in what scientists call albedo.

Ryan: Albatross? What do birds with giant wingspans have to do with melting sea ice and climate change?

Inukshuk: Not albatross... albedo. It's the reflective property of a surface. Ice, for example, has a lot of it while your black toque, and even water, has very little of it. Basically, because snow and ice reflect most of the sunlight that reaches its surface, it has a high albedo.

Morgan: So if we get a lot more open water we get an invasion of birds with long wingspans (laughter)! Sorry, I couldn't resist...

Inukshuk: Actually, as more solar radiation is absorbed, everything warms up, more snow and ice melts and temperatures keep rising... it's called a positive feedback loop.

Morgan and Ryan: Cool!

Inukshuk: Umm... Warm actually! Such a spiralling increase in temperatures would lead to a warmer ocean. This in turn may affect the global conveyor belt of deep water currents that resurface in warm oceans before returning towards the poles. This conveyor belt controls much of the Northern Hemisphere's climate . The planet's thermostat could go haywire!

Ryan: So with less sea ice, things could really warm up. The Northwest passage might soon be wide open and polar bears might go hungry.

Morgan: I'm not getting a good feeling about all this... I want my ice back!

Inukshuk: It won't disappear overnight! And it might not be as bad as predicted. But there's no harm in equipping ourselves with good information to plan for the future. Imagine you are standing on the top of the world. Right now it looks like a giant frozen pond, extending as far south as Japan and covering the whole of Hudson's Bay! But by late summer, this same ice has retreated as far north as the Parry Islands. That's the growth-and-decay cycle of sea ice.

Morgan: I get the feeling this is only part of the story...

Inukshuk: Well... yes. Now for the worrisome part. Scientists working on the Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study have been monitoring the changes to the sea ice using satellite images and on-board observations from their state-of-the art icebreaker, the Amundsen. They believe that if current trends continue, summer sea ice may disappear completely by 2050! And even during winter, the ice might not even reach all the way to shore, anywhere!

Ryan: If this happens, it means that I might still be able to swim to the North Pole. Everybody's invited to the 2050 Arctic Swim-a-thon!

Morgan: Yeah, count me out of that please. Besides, I'd rather hitch a ride on a ship cruising the NorthWest passage! I'll be cheering you on from the deck of the Amundsen with a cup of hot chocolate.

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