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'The land is tearing itself apart': life on a collapsing Arctic isle
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/21/canada-arctic-herschel-island-qikiqtaruk-climate-permafrost-tundra-ecology-aoe‘The land is tearing itself apart’: life on a collapsing Arctic isle
On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada, researchers at the frontier of climate change are seeing its rich ecology slide into the sea as melting permafrost ice leaves little behind
By Leyland Cecco, on Herschel Island–Qikiqtaruk
Last summer, the western Arctic was uncomfortably hot. Smoke from Canada’s wildfires hung thick in the air, and swarms of mosquitoes searched for exposed skin. It was a maddening combination that left researchers on Qikiqtaruk, an island off the north coast of the Yukon, desperate for relief.
And so on a late July afternoon, a team of Canadian scientists dived into the Beaufort Sea, bobbing and splashing in a sheltered bay for nearly two hours. Later, as they lay sprawled on a beach, huge chunks of the island they were studying slid into the ocean.
“The land was giving us hints of what was to come,” says Richard Gordon, a senior ranger “Days before, we found all these puddles of clear water. But it hadn’t rained at all in days; you look up and see nothing but blue sky.
“Now we know: all of that ice in the permafrost had melted. The signs were there. We just didn’t know.”
…
On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada, researchers at the frontier of climate change are seeing its rich ecology slide into the sea as melting permafrost ice leaves little behind
By Leyland Cecco, on Herschel Island–Qikiqtaruk
Last summer, the western Arctic was uncomfortably hot. Smoke from Canada’s wildfires hung thick in the air, and swarms of mosquitoes searched for exposed skin. It was a maddening combination that left researchers on Qikiqtaruk, an island off the north coast of the Yukon, desperate for relief.
And so on a late July afternoon, a team of Canadian scientists dived into the Beaufort Sea, bobbing and splashing in a sheltered bay for nearly two hours. Later, as they lay sprawled on a beach, huge chunks of the island they were studying slid into the ocean.
“The land was giving us hints of what was to come,” says Richard Gordon, a senior ranger “Days before, we found all these puddles of clear water. But it hadn’t rained at all in days; you look up and see nothing but blue sky.
“Now we know: all of that ice in the permafrost had melted. The signs were there. We just didn’t know.”
…
