The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen, seen here clearing a path through the ice on the Saguenay river in 2005, is currently carrying over 40 scientists on a three-week journey to Canada's Arctic to study the effects of climate change.
(Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot)

For almost 25 years, John Smol of Queen's University has been making the trip to Cape Herschel on Ellesmere Island, a remote location in Canada's High Arctic and a marker for the Earth's climate.

He treks there to track the history of the region's lakes and ponds, bodies of water that he says have been rapidly disappearing as a result of a warming climate.

Queen's University scientist John Smol at Elison Lake on Ellesmere Island, on July 16, 2006. (Marianne Douglas)

For Smol and Arctic researchers like him, the legwork is an experience both scientifically rewarding and personally exhausting, as would-be Arctic researchers have to deal with a host of challenges in their efforts to better study the isolated North, from arduous and complicated planning and travel routes to encounters with curious polar bears.

But the importance of the work is what keeps Smol coming back, because the Arctic remains a rich and undiscovered arena for scientific observation, one that has become increasingly important to our understanding of the planet.

"The Arctic is really a bellwether, an early warning to what is happening for other regions," said Smol. "And historically it's an area where not a lot of people have done research."

That may be changing, as concern about rising temperatures and man's role in the process spreads to nations across the world. Earlier this year, the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science launched the International Polar Year program, the fourth comprehensive study of the Arctic and Antarctic regions and the first such survey in 50 years.

The program will help co-ordinate thousands of scientists from more than 60 countries heading to the two regions to study the effects of global warming.

Canada's contribution to the program launched on July 26 when a team of more than 40 scientists boarded the icebreaker Amundsen for a three-week trek into the Arctic, part of a 15-month research project that will look at everything from changes in sea ice to the impact of global warming on marine life.

David Barber, the chief scientist aboard the Amundsen and a climate scientist with the University of Manitoba, said the International Polar Year program will give scientists a chance to see first-hand the effect of climate change in high-latitude regions.

"Over the past several years, the Arctic has warmed about three times the global average," Barber wrote in an e-mail to CBCNews.ca from aboard the Amundsen.

The International Polar Year program offers "an opportunity for a focused international scientific investigation into the multi-faceted nature of the effects of this warming on the natural world and the peoples of the north," he said.

Barber heads the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System (CFL) study looking at how changes in the physical conditions affect biological processes in the Arctic. The CFL team is one of three major scientific groups aboard the Amundsen, joining scientists from the Inuit Health Survey and members of ArcticNet, a network of scientists hosted by Laval University.

The Amundsen trip around Labrador on the journey to the Canadian Arctic is something of a rarity for Arctic explorers, as most travellers to the region have to make their own way and require a far more complex and circuitous route.

Difficult journey affects research

The difficulty in getting to the Arctic is the biggest reason so few researchers make the trip, said Smol.

The desiccated remains of Camp Pond in Cape Herschel, Ellesmere Island, in a photo that was taken on July 11, 2006. (Marianne Douglas)

"It's logistically hard and expensive to get there," he told CBCNews.ca. "To get to Herschel Bay I first have to get to the North and then commandeer an airplane to Resolute Bay in Nunavut. From there I take a double prop to get to Ellesmere, and then from there a helicopter to Cape Herschel."

The other limitation that comes with Arctic research is the sheer quantity of food research teams must pack for their isolated journeys. Since regions like Cape Herschel are so isolated, teams of researchers need to not only pack for the duration of the study but also a week of reserve food in case weather conditions delay the arrival of the return trip's helicopter.

"It's surprising how much food you need to bring. If you have a team of six researchers, that's 18 meals a day, so if you're there for three weeks that's 378 meals. That's a lot to carry."

But Smol has seen improvements in Arctic exploration since he made his first trip to the region in 1983. Two technologies in particular have become an indispensable part of any Arctic explorer's backpack: a satellite phone and a handheld global positioning system device.

"We used to rely on two-way radios, but now with those two [tools] you can reach help from anywhere and always give your exact location, two things that make travelling much safer," he said.

Barber also credits a host of advances with providing more detailed scientific results. Among the notable developments are better instrumentation for annual observatories, more precise aquatic sampling instruments, optical sensors to provide ocean colour information and thermal infrared satellite sensors to monitor surface temperatures from space, he said.

Not every challenge of the Arctic can be deterred with high-tech devices, however. Smol recalls in particular one expedition in which his team took the usual precautions to guard against polar bears: a car battery powered electric fence to surround the camp and sound an alarm to go with a host of hand-held noise makers.

But for one curious polar bear, the cacophony of noise did little to deter it from coming into the camp and biting into one of the tents.

"It was very close, so we used a 12-gauge shotgun and fired into the air to scare it," recalls Smol. "We thought that would work, and it did run for about 50 metres, but then it stopped, sat down and just kept watching us. It's a good thing it was only curious and not aggressive."

There are other challenges to Arctic research, particularly the bitter cold and the isolation, but Smol said there is also the pleasure of working in a unique and beautiful area of the world.

Startling findings

But what keeps him going back is, ultimately, the work. Smol and longtime collaborator Marianne Douglas published a study in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in June, outlining their latest findings: that ponds in Canada's High Arctic are evaporating because of rising temperatures in the region.

Their trip to Cape Herschel in 2006 came with a startling discovery: ponds they had been studying since 1983 that had previously been a metre deep had either drastically shrunk or dried up entirely.

Smol was back at Cape Herschel in July of this year as well, and his findings remain the same.

"The ponds have dried up again this year, and it's still early in the year. It usually takes until the end of the summer for the temperatures to warm sufficiently to evaporate the ponds, but not this year," he said.

The results, he said, could have a catastrophic impact on the local ecosystems, from insect larvae that thrive in the ponds to the larger animals that feed on them.

It's the kind of research that can only be done through careful observation over years, he said. And it's why Smol applauds the Amundsen mission and any future plans to further explore the Canadian north.

"Two thirds of our coastline is in the Arctic, and we still know very little about what's going on up there," he said. "We have a lot to learn and a lot of work to do yet."

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