Changes scientists didn't expect for another 50 years are happening now, research suggests

Ice was the last thing David Barber was worried about when he and an international team of scientists made plans last year to have their research icebreaker frozen into the Beaufort Sea for the winter.

But when the Amundsen sailed into the western Arctic in November, the ice that normally begins to take hold in October hadn't even begun to gel.


"Even by mid-December, the southern Beaufort Sea was still wide open," said Barber, a University of Manitoba sea ice physicist and chief scientist aboard the Amundsen. "That's over a month longer than the time freeze-up normally occurs."

Barber and his colleagues got an even bigger surprise when they sailed north into M'Clure Strait, the main channel connecting the Northwest Passage to the western Arctic. The strait is legendary as a gateway for thick, rock-hard, multi-year ice that piles in from the Beaufort Sea, but Barber and his colleagues found nothing but clear sailing.