Climate Change in the Arctic - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 263

summer replenishment of nutrients from deeper depths and therefore restricts the mag-
nitude of summer phytoplankton growth, which is the basis of the Arctic offshore food
chain.
Clearly, the Arctic Messenger is telling us that Arctic sea ice is vanishing in summer
and is doing so with increasing speed. We are also being told that the loss of ice is fun-
damentally changing how the Arctic Ocean interacts with the atmosphere. The immediate
casualty is the Arctic marine ecosystem that has evolved to depend on the existence of
a summer sea ice “landscape” that will cease to exist within the lifetime of anyone born
after about 1970. This is not an aspect we have so far addressed nor have we considered
the cultural and economic implications for those peoples who for hundreds or thousands of
years have been an integral part of that ecosystem. Like all cultures in the world, they have
evolved historically to be in harmony with their regional climate. Now they will have to
adjust to a new climate that is alien to their culture.