The Arctic melt

The Arctic melt

There was a time when Russell Atagootak would first look to the sky as he prepared to hunt seal.

"The clouds told us the weather," he says, "then we would know if it was a good day to hunt." 

Forecasting the weather through cloud formations was once a reliable Inuit tradition, passed down through generations. 

"It was elders in my community that first noticed the clouds were changing," says the 23-year-old hunter and guide.

"The patterns were no longer the same … they became more and more unpredictable. Now they're impossible to read."

About 10km out into the bay from his town of Resolute are other reminders of how the Arctic environment is fast changing. Fields of broken ice stretch as far as the eye can see, and beyond is open water. Not long ago, Inuit and their dog sled teams could count on smooth ice to roam and hunt. 

Not any longer.

"The currents [in the ocean] have become very strong, which means it is harder for the ice to freeze each cold season," says Atagootak.

Warmest winter on record

This winter in Canada has been the warmest on record. And this year experts believe that once the final data comes in, it will show the polar ice cap shrinking to its smallest size on record.

In a field close to Resolute's airport, the town's resident weather expert, Wayne Davidson, can often be seen sending off the day's weather balloons. He has been measuring the changing climate in the north for 25 years and his latest research has convinced him that the polar climate is being altered at a frightening pace.

"It's warming, there is no question about it, and those who dispute this, don't know what they're talking about, all my measurements prove it."

Known as a meteorological observer, Davidson was once a skeptic on global warming. Today he is a firm believer. 

With renewed, and often heated debate among the scientific community in recent months over the issue, he gets somewhat touchy, when questioned about the subject.

"You need to actually spend time out here to get a true picture of what is happening, some of my fellow researchers are not doing enough of that."

Eaten away

A few hundred kilometers from the North Pole, on ice that did freeze this winter, Atagootak steers a snowmobile carrying scientists to a research site.

He has abandoned this year's spring hunt for now and is helping a team of researchers as they dig through the ice for clues on the changing weather.

While a great deal of attention has been spent studying the earth's atmosphere, far less is known about how climate change is affecting the oceans.

Atagootak has been hired to guide scientists from the Catlin Arctic Survey, as they look at how carbon dioxide, one of the key greenhouse gases, may be turning the world's seas acidic. 

The oceans absorb half of the world's output of carbon dioxide, but it changes the water's ph levels. And according to lab tests, rising acid levels are already eating away the shells of some marine life.

Atagootak says he doesn't know much about the "science" behind what is happening, but says from what he sees around him, he believes the world is being altered in a "dramatic" fashion, one that will forever affect his and his peoples way of life.