In Search of a Frozen Ocean | Stephen Smith | TEDxURI
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FkZS9Ddeug Video ID: 6FkZS9Ddeug ============================================================ it's 1881 it's a first international polar year a dozen countries have gotten together to learn more about the Arctic region this is the first time that science is being integrated into polar exploration the United States is doing its part they've established a base 500 miles from the North Pole the officer in charge is Adolphus Greely Greely and 24 men are dropped off by tallship on the shores in the narrow passage between the northern tip of Canada and the northernmost tip of Greenland their mission is to go out and connect science and also to fill in those blank spots on the map this is actually these very first time in the Arctic and most of the men yes with them they go out there and they accomplish a lot but things start going sideways because no relief ships are able to get back to people month really and his men are essentially a battery so at the end of the third summer really is faced with this harrowing decision should I stay or should I go his men load up three wooden row boats and they head off much of their time is spent hauling those boats over frozen ocean well they make it to this pre-arranged rendezvous site that's about 300 nautical miles to the south when they get there they discover that nothing has been left there for them and then comes the winter by the following spring when rescue finally does arrive out of 24 men there are seven survivors so 120 years later I was asked to lead the first-ever expedition to retrace Ruby's journey I told the man that had approached me I said nothing has changed since release time and it was true the conditions that we encountered in 2004 mirrored those of the 1880s the ice floes were so huge as some of them were 50 feet back in 25 miles wide the single ice book those flows were so big that some of them even blocked that channel you know with one edge nudging up against Canada on the other nudging against Finland fast so like really it took us six weeks to cover those 300 nautical miles and unlike really unlike Greeley we got picked up at the other end so in the years that followed I spoke to a lot of people about the Arctic and I came to realize that while many are familiar with the idea of melting ice caps and they're too retreated fuller glaciers they're very few of my audiences had any familiarity with the Arctic Ocean environment and so in 2017 I made the decision to go back to the High Arctic to make a film about the Arctic Ocean and it seems well I knew that things had changed up there but being back was a complete shocker It was as if all of those ice floes those massive ice floes had been run through an industrial blender gone were those massive flows those Manhattan sighs close to the past and in their place was a rubble field of crumbled and battered sea ice some flows the size of this stage others the size of this red circle it was truly extraordinary in five weeks of travel we managed to cover 60 nautical miles our journey actually became one of survived well these three snapshots in time are really important and I want to come back to them what I want to talk about the earth for a moment what if our earth had a simple way to keep itself cool a cooling system that ran all year long always on automatic would let him just enough of the sun's energy to keep us comfortable and it would deflect just enough of the sun's energy so that we didn't overheat in the language of science fiction it would be like some kind of planetary shield or maybe a giant mirror intercepting those solar rays and sending them back out to space well our earth does have a simple way to keep itself cool the Arctic Ocean it's barely visible on a wall map and yet it's wide enough to swallow the moon and when you find it they're on that map like all oceans on there it's going to be represented in blue well what if that ocean was actually white instead of blue what if its surface was actually covered in frozen white ice what would happen at the sunshine on a white surface instead of into a dark blue sea or to put it simply why is the color of the Arctic Ocean matter and how does that relate to this idea of a planetary cooling system for millions of years the surface of the Arctic Ocean has been mainly frozen frozen into white lights and because it's been frozen it's been able to reflect the sun's energy back out space in fact snow-covered sea ice reflects 93% of the incoming energy from the Sun and that white frozen surface also acts as a blanket that insulates the ocean below from the atmosphere but on the other hand the Sun shines on an open ocean those seas were so when the Sun shines on an open ocean all that energy is absorbed and the seas were when those T's warm this causes the neighboring ice floes to melt as those ice floes melt this leads to more open ocean which leads to more ice melting which leads to more open ocean and so on in the language of science this is sea ice albedo feedback albedo being a measure of whiteness it's like this imagine you're a parent dressing your child to send them out to play on a hot summer day what t-shirt are you gonna put on are you gonna give them the white t-shirt are you gonna put on the black t-shirt so that frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean that's that's our planets white t-shirt the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean is part of a unique cooling system it's a part of a unique system that has kept our earth cool through the ages so let's go back to our three snapshots in time the changes that I saw in 2017 were ones that I could never have foreseen and yet it turns out that through my experiences I've been a witness to the greatest I've been a witness to the greatest environmental transformation of our time no other environment on earth has changed as rapidly as the Arctic Ocean has no other environment has lost three-quarters of its solid mass in scarcely four decades that's right the Arctic Ocean has lost three-quarters of its sea ice volume in that short space of time this transformation this shrinkage in sea ice volume in the Arctic Ocean this means that the Arctic Ocean is rapidly shifting from being a key component of our Earth's cooling system to actually be part of its heating system think about that for a moment the impact of that transformation is like the flick of a light switch when sea ice melts the change in color the change in albedo its immediate this is not a slow steady creep of sea level rise the ocean is either white and reflecting the sun's energy back to space or it's dark and it's absorbing that sun's energy into its depths and yet few part from climate scientists and pull or ocean ographers are familiar with the fundamental role of Arctic sea ice in regulating global climate so I'm imagining this scene on the Star Trek you know I'm standing in the control room of the Starship Enterprise right ship is under attack and those deflector shields are all we've got it's kind of like that for us as passengers on Spaceship Earth our ship is under bombardment by the Sun and our great deflector shield the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean is weakening we have to get that deflector shield back up which is actually something we can do climate science tells us that sea ice will return once greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are lower I know what you think an impossible task let's think about that one for a moment when humans first discovered how to make fire could any of them have a magical world like the one we live in today we're just getting going on renewable energy and viable alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels in the context of those humans and that first fire renewable energy today is primitive technology I could only imagine there once humanity puts its mind to it we can create a new energy paradigm that will set up the conditions for Arctic sea ice cover to be restored but in order to do that we need to take the emphasis off of the individual with the individuals doing or it hasn't been doing and we need to put the focus on the structural change that society needs to make with all of us working together as a whole we need to do this we have to do this we can do this Arctic sea ice is a fundamental part of a habitable planet you