New Health Threats Come with Ice Melt in the Arctic

Strong winds fractured a sheet of melting ice near Barrow, Alaska, one April afternoon, cutting a three-man whaling crew adrift in the Arctic Ocean. A boat had to be dispatched to rescue them, and according to local observers, the narrowly averted tragedy wasn’t a surprise.

“One captain predicted this to happen, so perhaps more experienced whalers are adapting to the unpredictability of young sea ice and avoiding traveling during high winds,” concluded a report posted after the event to the Local Environmental Observer (LEO) Network. “But even experienced hunters can get into trouble.”

Hosted by the Center for Climate and Health at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Anchorage, the LEO network catalogs ongoing environmental and public health changes in northern communities, from treacherous sea ice conditions to new, exotic diseases. There isn’t much research in those fields, so across the Arctic, scientists are relying on anecdotal evidence from self-reported incidents like the whaling team rescue to piece together ways that climate change is threatening the health of already-vulnerable northern communities.

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Image courtesy of Nancy Heise via Wikimedia Commons.

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