From top: A river, thick with silt, runs through a rich green Yukon landscape near Mackenzie Bay; the rugged, but beautiful northeastern coast of Baffin Island near Cape Hooper.

Every day, Eddy Carmack, an oceanographer with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, hopes someone will call with news about his lost beer bottles. In the past two years, ships’ crews helping Carmack with an ocean current experiment have dropped 2,400 wax-sealed high-top bottles into the Arctic Ocean.

So far, he’s heard back from roughly 65 people who have found his bottles in France, Ireland, Alaska and the Canadian Arctic. The note-in-a-bottle experiment proves two things: Carmack’s theory on Arctic currents; and Canadian Arctic scientists are very resourceful people.

Carmack’s research is important to climatologists because the Arctic’s ocean currents have a big impact on much of the northern hemisphere’s weather. As well, the fisheries along Canada’s east coast depend on the nutrient-rich currents coming south through the Davis Strait between Baffin Island and Greenland. The oceanographer’s note-in-a-bottle experiment relies on the goodwill of the crews of icebreakers and cargo ships working in the Arctic who toss the bottles overboard, and on the people who find them and then phone Carmack with the news.

Of course not all of Canada’s Arctic research is as low-tech as Carmack’s.

This June, a gold-foil-covered beach-ball-sized satellite is scheduled to be launched into orbit above the Canadian Arctic to monitor climate change in the most northern parts of the country. The little satellite, SCISAT, will be the first Canadian scientific spacecraft to be launched in 10 years, and it’s not surprising that the Canadian Space Agency chose to focus its scientific research on the North, an immense hinterland that lies beyond the narrow band of the country in which most Canadians live, but generally refers to the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The agency’s interest in the North is not surprising because Arctic research, in everything from climate to diamond exploration and dinosaur hunting, is hot right now.

University of Waterloo physicist Peter Bernath, the lead scientist on the satellite project, says SCISAT will study the ozone layer over the Arctic and pollution worldwide. He says the Arctic is still one of the most mysterious places on Earth. “We still don’t know what the mechanics of Arctic climate change are. The Arctic is like no other place on Earth, a place that has defied many theories. It’s also an integral part of this country, and changes to the Arctic can have ramifications throughout the world.

“In springtime, almost all of the ozone in the Antarctic goes away. In the Arctic, we see about a 30 to 40 per cent decrease. The Arctic is different. It’s warmer than the Antarctic, the seasons are different, and people live there. There’s been a prediction that there will be an ozone hole in the Arctic in 10 years, but that’s just a model. This satellite will help us know for sure,” he explains.

It should be pointed out though that news of SCISAT’s planned mission follows a decision made late last year to mothball the Arctic Stratospheric Ozone Observatory which was erected near Eureka on Ellesmere Island in the 1990s by Environment Canada.

In addition to studying changes in the Arctic atmosphere, SCISAT is expected to look at changes to the atmosphere in the middle latitudes and tropics. It will watch to see how much water vapour is getting into the upper atmosphere from the world’s rainforests and will trace pollution patterns.

SCISAT’s mission and $10 million in new Arctic research money in February’s federal budget will definitely help Canadian scientists maintain a strong presence in the Arctic, says federal Environment Minister David Anderson. “The Arctic is an important part of Canada. It’s part of the very soul of this country. I think we’ve made it very clear that research, especially on climate change, is very important to this government. We stressed that in our budget, and we’ve sent that message to the scientific community.”

Many scientists, however, say the federal government must do much more if Canada is to retain sovereignty over our Arctic territories and a respected place in northern science. On a per capita basis, prior to the February budget, the United States was spending roughly five times what Canada was spending on Arctic study.

Nevertheless, the federal government says a Canadian research presence in the North is an essential assertion of our sovereignty. In fact, a policy statement from The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade states that Canada’s future security and prosperity are “closely linked with our ability to manage complex northern issues.”

By and large, Canadians see themselves as a northern people even though some 90 per cent of us live south of the 50th parallel that skirts across the country through Winnipeg. Our largest northern city–Edmonton–is at about the same latitude as Manchester, England, and Berlin, Germany. And so while the North is this country’s storehouse of mineral resources, most of us will never see it.

Since we have no major cities in the Arctic, our hold on it was based on the presence of native Canadians and the military. Canadians in uniform manned the Distant Early Warning Line, ran anti-submarine patrols, and, during World War II, hunted for Nazi weather stations.

Just as the Cold War ended and the military scaled back its role in the North, scientists began taking a greater interest in the Arctic. “When I first saw the Arctic 30 years ago, I thought it was a dangerous, frightening place,” says University of Ottawa professor Peter Johnson, president of the Canadian Polar Commission. “But once you understand it, you see that it’s a beautiful, powerful place.”

His Ottawa-based agency, which was established under federal law in 1991 as the lead organization for polar research, sends scientists to the North to do climatic, geologic and health research. It also advises governments on arctic issues and works to raise Canadians’ awareness of those issues. “The Arctic is a large part of our country,” Johnson says. “It is a very environmentally sensitive part, one that has many of our citizens living in a place of great change. We have a moral and a scientific obligation to understand what is happening in the Arctic.”

University of Western Ontario physics professor Gordon McBean, who chairs the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science, says the end of the Cold War had an unexpected casualty: Canadian climate research in the Arctic. Most of the people who gathered climate data in the Arctic were military, and now military priorities have changed.

McBean, who, until 1999 was head of the Canadian Meteorological Service, said, “The military needed its string of DEW Line bases and the meteorological stations like Eureka. When the Cold War ended, I had to close some of those weather stations because we just didn’t have the money to keep them open. If the military ever decides to move out of the last of those bases, especially places like Alert in Nunavut, we’re left with a big hole.”

McBean says Canada needs to increase its presence in the Arctic, both for scientific reasons and because the Arctic is, both physically and spiritually, a large part of what Canada is as a nation. “While most of the population lives in the south, the reality is that most of the country is in the North. Understanding it is part of our global responsibility. We should understand our own country. It’s clear that the Arctic is changing more because of insults from the rest of the world, influences due to climate change, toxic chemicals, coming into the Arctic, which are influencing the people and the ecosystems, the marine environment, in ways that have changed it dramatically in the last few decades and will change it significantly more in the next few decades.

“Canadian scientists are recognized worldwide as pretty good scientists. We have excellent people. We have, unfortunately, had in the past decade a decreasing capacity to do our part. I personally don’t find it acceptable, as a Canadian scientist and former senior bureaucrat that our scientists go into the North, sometimes, on a Canadian icebreaker rented by the United States because we can’t afford it. Canadians often get the opportunity to tag along, but we’re a G-8 country and I don’t think we should be ‘tagging along’ in our territory.”

The Canadian government responded to this type of criticism by creating the Canadian Polar Commission and the Polar Continental Shelf Project. The latter is based at Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories. These agencies help researchers with navigation, transportation, accommodation and transport. Government agencies issue polar bear warnings to research camps, save stranded scientists, and help publish scientific papers.

McBean, however, says Canada needs a solid push into a higher level of arctic research, one in which Canadian scientists can be leaders in polar research. Like many other scientists, he warns that foreign scientists will pry the data out of the Canadian Arctic. “It’s such an important part of Canada. It should be us doing the research. The strength of our claim of sovereignty in the Arctic requires us to be there, to be in charge. We can’t just be small players sharing the region with everyone and anyone. The Canadian Arctic is not international territory, like Antarctica,” he says.

McBean notes that Canada is bound by the Kyoto Accord on climate change to do systematic climate research and report the findings to international agencies. Still, most of the $2 billion earmarked in February’s federal budget for Kyoto implementation is going to emission reduction targets, not research, he adds.

Scientists note that many countries have assigned a high priority to Arctic research. South Korea, for instance, has developed a 30-year plan of Arctic research and experiments. Italy’s government bought an icebreaker so its scientists can set up research stations in the Arctic. Scientists, themselves, can help smooth over some of the troubles facing Arctic science by working together and by seeking advice and help from scientists in other disciplines. As well, the government has to take a long-term
approach to research, McBean says.

McBean wants the focus to be on long-term climate research. “We will not be able to tell in 50 years if the countries (that signed onto Kyoto) actually did Kyoto or not, but if we do not do Kyoto, we will never get to Kyoto II, III and IV, where the really big steps start coming in. I don’t see that long-term systematic work, even on the emission reduction side. There is no possibility, in my view, that climate will stabilize in less than 100 years. Temperatures are going up. Kyoto and other things will decide whether we are going up to six degrees of global warming or two degrees of global warming. Either is huge.

“We need to adapt to change. We need to understand the scientific changes much, much better.”

Like many other Canadian scientists, McBean believes scientists planning to do research in the area need to work with, and listen to, the people who were born and live in the Arctic.

Stephen Mills, a community leader in Vuntut Gwich’in First Nation in the Yukon, says Arctic research isn’t just an academic exercise. Native people have seen many changes in the Arctic and sub-Arctic and want to know how to adapt. “Global warming, to the people who live in these areas, is extremely fast. It’s shaking some of our beliefs and some of the foundations on which we live. Our people are very adaptable. We have adapted well to the new people who have come into our area in the past 100 years, and there have been some very big changes.

“What do you do when, after thousands of years, the teachings that you have learned start to seem questionable or they’re no longer valid? In our area, my great aunt, who was in her 80s, who, for her entire life used to go to the same areas that my family has gone to for generations at the same time of year to do the same fishing, fell through the ice and drowned three years ago. You can see, over the past 20 years, a decrease in ice levels in our river systems and you can see the increase in some of the snow that we’re starting to find.

“You can see the difficulty that our people have when they try to travel on the land. Some people don’t travel because they can no longer trust the knowledge they have always had.”

Wetlands have dried up because the melting of permafrost beneath them has allowed the water to drain away. Flooding rivers erode communities and archaeological sites. He says higher temperatures mean more snow and a new period of freezing and thawing in the fall that puts a layer of ice over the ground, making it hard for caribou to find food. His band relies on the Porcupine caribou herd. The animals, he says, are in declining health. “For the past five years, the caribou migration has been behind schedule. The snow levels have been too deep, so the animals can’t move. In most years, when the herd is supposed to have passed the Porcupine River and our community on its way to the North Slope of the Yukon and Alaska, it has not passed the Porcupine River.

“We’ve seen a 50 to 75 per cent increase in calf mortality rates because the young caribou are drowning in the swollen river. We also see poorer return on salmon, new species of animals such as musk ox moving south, deer moving from the south, cougar moving in, new species of plants.

“We support scientific research because there are a lot of people who doubt climate change is happening. We need it because we need to understand, over time, what has occurred. But you have to combine scientific research with on-the-ground observation.

“We want to know what we have to do to adapt. Does it mean moving communities? Does it mean putting makeshift riverbank barriers to save communities? Does it mean we must stop increasing the harvest of Porcupine caribou herds because climate change is decreasing their numbers?”

His own band runs the Gwich’in Institute which collects documents on Arctic change, examines and protects archaeological sites, and gathers data on Gwich’in history. But not all of the scientists working in the Arctic are researching climate change. Paleontologists have found 40-million-year-old fossilized forests on several high Arctic islands. Diamond prospectors, spurred on by the Ekati discovery in the Northwest Territories, have fanned out through the Arctic and are concentrating on isolated parts of Ellesmere Island. Some $120 million was spent by diamond exploration companies in Nunavut last summer, with about 20 per cent of that money staying in the pockets of people in the territory. Eight large companies and dozens of junior companies are doing geological research in the territories. Along with diamonds, geologists have, in the past five years, found emeralds in the Yukon, platinum and gold in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, nickel, lead, zinc and copper.

And, says Phillip Currie, curator of Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum, “We now have dinosaur bones out of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon and up into the Arctic islands as well. The Arctic is actually the greatest development of badlands in Canada. It’s mostly desert.”

The bone hunters have special problems: Arctic dinosaur remains seem well-preserved until they’re taken out of the tundra. When they become warm and dry, they crumble into powder. And Elliott Burden, the scientist at Memorial University in St. John’s, Nfld., who found the first Canadian Arctic dinosaurs on Bylot Island in the summer of 1987, says he had to give up his research because he couldn’t raise the money to keep it going.

Now, Burden is working on oil and gas exploration off Newfoundland and in the Subarctic. “The Arctic is a special place with special problems,” says Xiao-Chun Wu, a paleontologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. “Dinosaurs had to adapt to it somehow. So do we.”

Among the special problems faced by scientists, researchers and companies working in the North is the high cost of doing business. This is something that cannot be overlooked. Transportation costs, including airfares, can be among the most expensive in the world. The return airfare for an adult flying from Ottawa to Iqaluit ranges from $1,200 to $2,000. Meanwhile, the cost of food and other supplies is about 30 per cent more than in the south. However, the cost of ignoring the North and not maintaining a research presence, could be a whole lot greater.