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An ice-free Arctic Ocean: history, science, and scepticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2013

Brandon Luedtke
Brandon Luedtke*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Kansas, 1445 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 3650, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA (B.Luedtke@ku.edu)
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Abstract

Over the last three centuries, geographers, oceanographers, geophysicists, glaciologists, climatologists, and geoengineers have shown great interest in Arctic Ocean sea ice extent. Many of these experts envisaged an ice-free Arctic Ocean. This article studies three stages of that narrative: the belief in an ice-free Arctic Ocean, the potential for one, and the threat of one. Eighteenth and nineteenth century interest in accessing navigable polar sea routes energised the belief in an iceless polar sea; an early twentieth century North Hemispheric warm spell combined with mid-century cold war geostrategy to open the potential for drastic sea ice loss; and, most recently, climate models have illuminated the threat of a seasonally ice-free future, igniting widespread concerns about the impact this might have on Earth's natural and physical systems. This long narrative of an ice-free Arctic Ocean can help to explain modern-day scepticism of human-induced environmental change in the far north.

Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , March 2015 , pp. 130 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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