Ice melt means spike in CG Arctic operations

[CommunityEditor]

Coast Guard officials say they have no official opinion about the human role in global warming — do carbon emissions worsen it, can its effects be slowed — but whatever the cause, there is water in the Arctic where there used to be ice. That means more ships can now use waterways that have long been frozen, and if they have trouble, the Coast Guard will get more calls for help.

But the meat-and-potatoes jobs Coast Guardsmen do everywhere — search and rescue, maritime security and law enforcement — aren’t as simple in the frozen north as they are in, say, Hawaii. Coast Guardsmen in Alaska already operate in some of the harshest natural conditions anywhere in the lifesaving service: in the brutal cold, the perpetual day — or night, depending on the season — and in the infamous Bering Sea, so extreme it has become the backdrop for TV shows (“Deadliest Catch”) and movies (“The Guardian”).

The distances are vast: Alaska alone has as much coastline as about half the lower 48 states of the U.S. Before they called off the search for a Japanese balloonist who crashed south of the Aleutian Islands in February, Coast Guardsmen searched an area of ocean about the size of Kentucky. In October, when a C-130 made the Coast Guard’s first flight from Kodiak to the North Pole and back, the trip took eight hours — and the plane’s fuel almost froze.

The prospect of more traffic above the Arctic Circle has spurred officials to prepare for a summer of expanded operations north of the Bering Strait. The Coast Guard plans to take advantage of a longer ice-free season in the Arctic to get its clearest sense yet of the state of high-altitude navigation and what capabilities it has, and doesn’t have, in the extreme cold.

“We’re doubling the size of my [area of operations], at least, with no new resources,” said Rear Adm. Arthur “Gene” Brooks, commander of Coast Guard District 17, which covers Alaska. “But before I can really develop a new requirements deck, I won’t be sure how much of what we really need to do what we do in the Arctic. Until I go there, feel it, touch it, smell it, I won’t be able to responsibly ask for more resources.”

So Brooks and his top Alaska Coast Guardsmen are planning a slew of exploratory operations for the warm months: including at least four icebreaker expeditions, a buoy tender mission to assess the state of navigation at the high latitudes, and more aircraft deployed north to expand the amount of territory the Coat Guard can consistently watch and in which it can operate.

By autumn, when the ice begins to return, Brooks wants to be able to take his findings to Coast Guard Headquarters and Congress and ask confidently for more ships, aircraft or personnel, if needed. With detailed new data, Brooks hopes he can win over skeptics who dismiss his requests as just another complaint for more funding in a service with a culture that esteems the principle of doing more with less.

“People hear all this and say, ‘Oh, Brooks, you just want another icebreaker,’ but it’s much larger than that,” he said.

Coast Guardsmen aren’t the only ones who need to dramatically reassess their capabilities and policies for the Arctic, top officials say — the entire federal government, including the Navy and the departments of State and the Interior, needs to have “a national dialogue on the Arctic,” said Adm. Thad Allen, the Coast Guard’s commandant.

What islands and waterways will the U.S. defend at the top of the world? How will it administer mineral and energy resources, and which ones does it cede to the other Arctic nations? With as much as a quarter of the world’s untapped energy reserves believed to be somewhere under the polar oceans, activity at the top of the world is expected to increase precipitously in the next decade; last year, Russian leaders showed their commitment to the Arctic by planting a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole.

The Coast Guard can’t make the relevant policy decisions, top commanders say, but it needs clarity for how it must operate in the polar latitudes. Even now, federal policies and Coast Guard resources are lagging behind the daily reality in Alaska.

As an example, Brooks cited the Red Dog mine, the largest open-pit mine in the world, responsible for 10 percent of the world’s zinc reserves. For most of the year, enormous vehicles truck raw ore 67 miles from the inland mine to the coast, where it is stored in mile-long warehouses. During a two-month warm-weather window, enormous bulk cargo ships, displacing 70,000 tons or more, sail through the treacherous Chukchi Sea to get the zinc ore. They must anchor 11 miles offshore and send in huge ferries to bring aboard the metal.

The natural resources in Alaska’s North Slope are potentially so rich, Brooks said, that it could support 20 mines as large as the Red Dog. A fleet of at least 18 energy exploration ships are waiting to use this summer’s longer shipping season to look for the huge reserves of coal and oil that will be easier to access as the ice retreats. But Allen and Brooks say U.S. policies aren’t clear about who owns which resources or how the various agencies involved should oversee them.

Another example, Brooks said, is eco-tourism: In 2007, three cruise ships sailed north of Point Barrow and east into the Northwest Passage above Canada, Brooks said, calling that “a big surprise for me.” As the number of U.S. cruise passengers balloons — it is expected to double by 2025 —District 17 Coast Guardsmen must be prepared to respond to a major cruise ship accident as far as 200 miles north of Barrow. Right now, they simply can’t, Brooks said.

To get their clearest sense yet about the lay of the land and the most accurate sense of the Coast Guard’s abilities, some of the missions District 17 commanders are planning these missions for this summer include:

* The icebreaker Healy is to make as many as three scientific research trips into the Arctic this summer, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation.

* The icebreaker Polar Sea is to sail in March or April north into Beaufort Sea, having been pulled away from a tentative mission to the Antarctic, at the opposite end of the planet.

* The buoy tender Spar will sail from its homeport of Kodiak to make the most thorough accounting yet of the state of Arctic navigation. Its crew will assess the needs for lights, buoys, transit separation schemes and other aids to navigation along waterways that have long been impassable because of ice.

* Coast Guard C-130 search and rescue planes will begin flying missions from forward operating bases in Nome and Barrow, so commanders can begin planning how to extend a mission set now mostly confined to the southern half of Alaska.

Brooks stressed that the U.S. and the Coast Guard must plan for the “new Arctic” now; the effects of polar melting are no longer something that could happen in the distant future, he said.

“I thought, when I first got here, that this was an issue for 2020, 2030 or 2040,” Brooks said. “My first year in Alaska convinced me the [new] Arctic is already here, that this is an issue for now. I go around in Alaska and talk to people and say, ‘are you seeing the same things?’ and the response I’m getting is ‘we’ve been seeing these things for years, why haven’t you been listening?’”


Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/20...rctic_080224w/

Rather curious to to know where some of the data comes from.

Red Dog Mine has vessels anchoring approximately 4 miles from shore due to draft restrictions and has a loading season from July 10 to about October 30th ( Open Water)

* The buoy tender Spar will sail from its homeport of Kodiak to make the most thorough accounting yet of the state of Arctic navigation. Its crew will assess the needs for lights, buoys, transit separation schemes and other aids to navigation along waterways that have long been impassable because of ice.


Does anyone know how long the Spar will be going out for or when they will be going out? The whole summer? A month? Any ideas?
Thanks

[anthonyw79]

Where are the icebreaker ships home ported from?

[dolphindriver]

The big CG icebreakers are homeported in Seattle, WA