The planting of a Russian titanium flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean in August 2007, broadcasted by the Russian channel NTV, caused a global series of public and political outcry that recalled bygone times of a zero-sum game in the traditional Cold War understanding: “the coldest war” (Matthews 2009) resurfaced with a world’s new Great Game slightly moving north (Smith 2007; Borgerson 2009). In “the fight for the top of the world” (Graff 2007) the Arctic states were expected to “make pre- emptive military strikes” in order secure the region’s estimated natural resources (Galeotti 2008: 11).114 It purportedly set off a “race for control of the Arctic” (Woodard 2007) and is considered a “turning point in international attention to the region” (Offerdal 2011b: 863–864). Although “the flag plant incident was inconsequential” from an international legal perspective (Dodds 2013: 46), the episode was followed by an Arctic turmoil causing strong and seemed to be overcome Russophobic reactions not only among academic circles and the media but essentially also from other Arctic states. According to Cohen, “Russia's decision to take an aggressive stand in the polar area has left the U.S., Canada, and the Nordic
114 Already as early as 2005, The New York Times quoted an energy analyst’s statement of a “Great
countries little choice but to forge a cooperative High North strategy (…)” (2008: 36). Especially in Canada the incident spurred intense nationalistic reactions (Ingimundarson 2010: 21). Most prominently quoted, the then Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay stated that “[t]his isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say: 'We're claiming this territory'” (Parfitt 2007). The U.S., in terms of the State Department’s deputy spokesman Tom Casey, reacted similarly: “I'm not sure of whether they've put a metal flag, a rubber flag or a bed sheet on the ocean floor. Either way, it doesn't have any legal standing or effect on this claim.” (CNN 2007) Russia publically responded with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov returning: “I was amazed by my Canadian counterpart’s statement that we are planting flags around. We’re not throwing flags around. (…) The purpose of the expedition is not to stake whatever rights of Russia, but to prove that our shelf extends to the North Pole.” (Gabuev 2007)
The Russian interpretation varied from a purely technical and scientific purpose in order to obtain seismic and bathymetric data for Russia’s submission to the CLCS to territorial consolidation and cultural symbolism. This territorial interpretation nourished a geopolitical imagination of the planting, indicating Russian polar nationalism that both highlights a domestic perspective and was simultaneously supposed to address Arctic opponents by specifying Russia’s belief of an extended sovereignty to the North Pole (Dodds 2013: 47). Consequently, the planting of the Russian flag has been comprehended as a demonstration of Russia’s desire to secure its strategic, economic, scientific and defence interests in the Arctic (Dey Nuttall & Nuttall 2009: 29). For some observers, the episode and the strong figurative substance the planting of a flag entails, was “symbolizing a claim for control” (Haftendorn 2011: 338). However, the expedition was basically a “private affair” (Young 2009b: 75), literally fuelled with Russian expertise and equipment for a well-articulated scientific purpose but yet financed by a Swedish pharmaceutical magnate and accompanied by an Australian adventure tour operator (Gerhardt et al. 2010: 996).
Although the flag planting episode had no international legal implications and was overall highly exaggerated, it concentrated speculations on the Arctic being a near- future epicentre of a new Cold War with Russia being publically perceived as “”wild card” in the Arctic strategic equation” (Zysk 2011: 93). Questions were raised if the region’s long-term future was one of international harmony based on the rule of law or one of a Hobbesian free-for-all (Borgerson 2009). It was especially the international media coverage about the event that influenced many policymakers around to globe to believe that the Arctic lacks any legal and institutional framework on political cooperation and environmental management (Powell 2011: 111).
Concerning an Ocean that Starts to Melt
The strategic elements of an apparently high potential of hydrocarbon resources, Arctic-domestic considerations and related rising international awareness were directly interrelated with an increasingly alarming climatic component: global warming and the record low of the Arctic’s average sea ice extent in 2007. As Gerhardt et al. put it fittingly: “As long as the Arctic Ocean was predominantly frozen but drifting ice pack, international interests in staking territorial claims over the vast Arctic were pushed to the side.” (2010: 996) The “Arctic meltdown” (Borgerson 2008), however, decisively changed this particular Arctic public picture.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the Greenlandic ice sheet has been losing mass ever since 1992, likely at a larger rate from 2002 to 2011, the extent of spring snow cover has continued to decrease and permafrost temperatures increased in response to amplified surface temperature and changing snow cover since the early 1980s. Additionally, the annual mean of Arctic sea ice extent has decreased over the period 1979 to 2012 (IPCC 2014b: SPM–4), reaching the above-mentioned provisional record low in 2007. In October that year the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center announced “Arctic sea ice shatters all previous record lows”. The September 2007 average sea ice extent, see Figure XV (page 127), was 4.28 million km2, so the
lowest level then since satellite measurements began in 1979 (NSIDC 2007), a reduction of 24% of the previous record low reached in September 2005 and 38% of
the climatological averages (Comiso et al. 2008: 6).115 For the purpose of comparison: the average September sea ice extent from 1979 to 2000 was 7.04 million km2, the climatological minimum 6.74 million km2 (NSIDC 2007).
Figure XV: Sea Ice Extent, September 2007
Source: (NSIDC 2014a) The graph was slightly edited for the purpose of this dissertation.
115 Sea ice extent either defines a sector as ‘ice-covered’ or ‘not ice-covered’. The most common
During the past decades, but particularly since the last 10 to 15 years, Arctic sea-ice extent, thickness and the age of ice have experienced continuous and faster accelerating reductions (Buixadé Farré et al. 2014: 311). Perennial sea ice extent has been considerably lower since 2002 (Comiso et al. 2008: 6).116 In March 2007, it was highlighted that over the period of satellite observations linear trends in the decline of Arctic sea ice extent have been negative in every month – smallest in winter and largest in September – assuming to have reached a tipping point with impacts not only confined to the Arctic region (Serreze, Holland & Stroeve 2007: 1533; University of Colorado at Boulder 2007). The concern of a potentially reached tipping point – the critical threshold of sea-ice thickness, greenhouse-gas concentration or a combination of factors – was considerably fuelled in September/October 2007 with the already indicated record September minimum in sea-ice extent. This was particularly driven by a “combination of several decades of sea-ice thinning and a highly unusual summer weather pattern” (Serreze 2011: 47). The seasonal asymmetry in trends further depends on a spring sea ice cover that is increasingly dominated by relatively thin ice, formed during the previous autumn and winter with less thicker-ice having survived at least one summer-melt period. To put it simple, the thinner the ice in spring, the less energy needed to melt out thin ice, the lower the ice extent at the end of summer (September).117
Additionally, thin spring ice strengthens the positive seasonal ice-albedo feedback, with areas of dark open-water (and a low albedo) being exposed to the sun earlier in the melt season, consequently leading to stronger heating of the ocean, more ice to be melting and more dark ocean to be exposed (Ibid.: 47). It is generally assumed that sea ice thickness is the best overall indicator to measure the health of the Arctic (University of Colorado at Boulder 2009) as it is essential to the stability of the sea ice cover. The thicker the ice the better it can withstand heat, winds and currents to survive the warmer summer months (NSIDC 2011). Winter sea ice
116 Perennial (sea) ice has been defined as “the ice that survives the summer and represents the thick
component [- called multiyear ice -] of the sea ice cover that may include ridged first-year ice” (Comiso 2012: 1176). Multiyear ice, typically ranging from 2 to 4 m, is ice that has survived at least one summer or more. During the 1980s, 50-60% of the Arctic Ocean’s ice were multiyear ice with the percentage dropping to 15% by the end of the summer 2010 (Polyakov, Walsh & Kwok 2012: 146).
117 Moreover, the rate and process of melting and freezing of sea ice is subject to oceanic currents,
thickness decreased from 3.64 m in 1980 to 1.89 m in 2008 which was a net decrease of 1.75 m (a minus of 48%) (Kwok & Rothrock 2009: 5).
The 2007 record low in average sea ice extend was, however, by no means the end of the related Arctic story. In September 2012, the average sea ice extent dropped to a new record low of 3.61 million km2, which was 3.43 million km2 below the 1979 to 2000 average extent (NSIDC 2012b).118 This trend continues, yet non-
linear, with the 2014 average of 5.28 million km2, the sixth lowest extent since 1979.
The 10 lowest September ice extents have now all occurred in the last 10 years (NSIDC 2014b). Figure XVI visualises the Arctic’s average summer sea ice retreat by contrasting the most recent record low from 2012 with the average extent of September 1996. Reaching 7.9 million km2, the 1996 average extent was the largest since the beginning of satellite data record in 1979.
Figure XVI: Sea Ice Extent, September 1996 and September 2012
Source: (NSIDC 2014a) The two graphs were slightly edited and visually contrasted for the purpose of this dissertation.
Similarly alarming is the dramatic decline of sea ice volume, an indicator directly related to thickness and extent and, hence, more directly tied to long-term trends of climate change, making it a more sensitive climate indicator than extent (Schweiger et al. 2011: 1). Changes in the sea ice volume impacts the heat budget of the Arctic and the related exchange of fresh water between the sea ice and the ocean (Laxon et al. 2013: 1). Simulations predicted that the loss of sea ice volume (3,4% per decade) will be greater than reductions in Arctic sea ice extent (2,4% per decade) (Gregory et al. 2002: 28–4). As visualised in Figure XVII (page 130), Arctic sea ice volume has declined over the past decades. The monthly average for September 2014 was 6,970 km3, 40% lower than the mean over the period, 59% lower than the maximum in 1979 and consequently consistent with the long-term decline of Arctic sea ice volume (Polar Science Center University of Washington 2014).119
Figure XVII: PIOMAS Arctic Sea Ice Volume, Monthly Sea Ice Volume for April and September from 1979 to 2014
Source: (Ibid.)
Even before the 2007 record low Holland et al. concluded that Arctic sea ice has undergone dramatic changes over the last decades, ranging from a substantial thinning of the ice pack, a reduction in the multiyear-ice area and a constantly
119 The Polar Science Center’s webpage is constantly updated at approximately one-month intervals.
renewed record minimum September ice cover (2006: 1). Serreze et al. inferred that although natural variability continuously impact the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice, the observed sea ice loss “strongly suggests a human influence”, primarily attributed to an observed rise in greenhouse gas concentrations and emissions (2007: 1536).
The Arctic is undoubtedly moving to a seasonally ice-free state in the summer, owing much of this development anthropogenic climate change and increased greenhouse gas forcing; the pace, however, is matter of serious discussions (Serreze 2011: 47; Overland & Wang 2013: 2100; IPCC 2014b: SPM–5).120 The prediction of long-term ice conditions in the Arctic remains a difficult task, also decisively due to numerous spatial and temporal uncertainties (Stroeve et al. 2012; Smith & Stephenson 2013).121 Yet, it is very likely that Arctic summer sea ice loss will occur rather in the first than the second half of the 21st century (Overland & Wang 2013: 2100) as “the Arctic will continue to warm more rapidly than the global mean” (IPCC 2014b: SPM–8). Recent analyses have concluded an expanded September – the Arctic shipping’s peak period – navigability by mid-century for all three Arctic shipping routes, the NEP, NWP and TSR (Smith & Stephenson 2013) and an expanded prolongation of the shipping season with a free passage from 3 to 6 months for the NEP/NSR and from 2 to 4 months for the NWP by the end of the 21st century, all for different kind of explicitly evaluated vessel classes (Khon et al. 2010).
Summary
Retrospectively, the events of summer/autumn 2007, the subsequent climatic developments and its inherent repercussions can be evaluated as starting point for another circle of Arctic geopoliticisation that essentially and enduringly reconfigures already uncertain Arctic spatialities. The following three Sections – 4.4.2 to 4.4.4 – give an overview on basically three different, yet interconnected spatialities that
120 Although, a summer ice-free Arctic is within the bounds of decadal possibility, the region will,
however, continue to have winter ice coverage in the foreseeable future (Comiso et al. 2008: 6).
121 In general sea ice increases from the Russian Arctic to the Canadian Arctic, responding to the mean
pattern of sea ice drift, convergence and lower temperatures on the Canadian side. In addition to the already unusual geography of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, weakened multi-year sea ice and many icebergs that move over the Arctic Ocean, create more complex long-term sea ice conditions
commonly created a new hype on the geopolitics of the Arctic: resources, maritime transportation and fisheries. They are aimed to shed a realistic light on the appearing wonders of an ‘Arctic scramble’. It has to be noted, however, that a comprehensive picture of every single activity and its related development cannot be offered. The intention is to convey an Arctic-related picture that is built upon certain expectations but decisively hampered by uncertain global developments and manifold, interrelated variables.