# Has The arctic Sea Ice returned? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 23, 2009, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635 "2009-01-23T14:28:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635/21 "2009-01-24T11:22:00Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > A few years back, the Northwest Passage became free of sea ice, for the first time in hundreds of years. I’m not sure that this is actually known. Suppose that the Northwest Passage “became ice free” for a week or two in 1936. Would the world have necessarily known about it? ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635/22 "2009-01-24T11:48:02Z")
Just to add to my previous post, [here](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070917-northwest-passage.html) is a National Geographic article from 2007: > [@](#): > > The famed Northwest Passage—a direct shipping route from Europe to Asia across the Arctic Ocean—is ice free for the first time since satellite records began in 1978, scientists reported Friday. That sounds somewhat believable to me. > [@](#): > > Also-an american entrepreneur bought the (Canadian) port of Chrchill (on the Hudson’s bay). his plan was to turn the port into a major shipping point to Europe-which would be assisted if the bay were to become ice-free throughout the year. has this come about, or is he screwed? The trouble with speculative investing is that it’s . . . speculative: > [@](#): > > Broe’s bet on Churchill looked like it was starting to pay off when in 2000 the port shipped 700,000 tons of grain–the most since 1990. (It needs 1 million tons to achieve long-term viability.) Its fortunes since then, however, have fluctuated, owing to bad harvests, bad weather and tough politics:The Canadian Wheat Board,a government entity, determines how much wheat Churchill gets; rival ports in more-populated areas have greater clout. > **[Pole Position](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/1213/176.html)** > > Profiting from melting ice. So I guess it’s a bit early to say if he is screwed. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635/23 "2009-01-24T13:20:57Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > I’m not sure that this is actually known. Suppose that the Northwest Passage “became ice free” for a week or two in 1936. Would the world have necessarily known about it? A more reasonable question would be, can we tell if the Northwest Passage was open during the Medieval Warm Period or the Holocene Maximum? ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635/24 "2009-01-24T13:52:17Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > And there are many shippers anticipating an advantage in the coming years from a more navigable Northwest Passage. I’d doubt it. It’s still dangerous, and full of random icebergs, if no longer icebound. No one’s ever gone there, so no one’s really mapped out sandbars, shoals, etc. for domestic shipping. Besides, the world’s changed. We have a canal in Panama, an extensive US railway system, and a Trans-Siberian railroad. Those were what was missing, way back when. > [@](#): > > Canada’s claims to sovereignty in the region are also taking on new significance - they are claiming the right to regulate traffic through it, whereas most other nations believe it to be international waters. Yes, but US nuclear attack subs were always prowling around under the ice, ready for a strike against the USSR. There was little Canada would/could do about that (as a specific policy, if not general sentiment.) ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635/25 "2009-01-24T14:00:16Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > A more reasonable question would be, can we tell if the Northwest Passage was open during the Medieval Warm Period or the Holocene Maximum? I agree 100%. I was trying to limit myself to the statement made in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635/26 "2009-01-24T16:55:02Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > 😕 What do you mean, “2 or three decades of data”? Temperature records and atmospheric gas concentration records have been reconstructed from Arctic ice cores for a period extending back [at least 650,000 years](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=221). I thought Antarctic cores were the source of data extending that far back into the Quaternary Period (and probably a more accurate source than Greenland ice sheet data), and that what goes back that far (with any certainty) for global data is an only (an extrapolation for) atmospheric CO2 levels, since any temperature inferences would necessarily be local to the area where the ice core is being sampled… what is the source of data for pre-Holocene global temperatures? ETA: And on further review I see this is pretty OT, so ignore it. Back to my tile cleaning, with apologies. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635/27 "2009-01-24T17:07:03Z")
> [@Arkcon](#): > > I’d doubt it. It’s still dangerous, and full of random icebergs, if no longer icebound. No one’s ever gone there, so no one’s really mapped out sandbars, shoals, etc. for domestic shipping. Besides, the world’s changed. We have a canal in Panama, an extensive US railway system, and a Trans-Siberian railroad. Those were what was missing, way back when. > … Certainly not immediately, but the subject’s getting a lot of play in the popular and financial press, certainly enough to heat up the Canadian sovereignty issue. It’s worth noting that the OP’s entrepreneur isn’t the only one thinking about it. Most of the large shipping firms think in terms of very long horizons. An eventual transpolar route if the ice cap melts may be of even more interest to them than the NW passage, per se, and would be undisputed international waters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-arctic-sea-ice-returned/482635.md?page=1)