March 13, 2021 • 46 mins
Global warming is changing the Arctic rapidly. Explorers of the past would barely recognize its green tundra, diminished glaciers, and ice-free seas. We’ll hear from journalists and historians who have followed in the footsteps of the explorers, and discovered their original routes have disappeared. What do these changes mean for the people who live there now, and our relationship to the Arctic today? Are there still places left to explore? How will we confront exploration’s nationalist and racist past and make the future more inclusive? This episode will look at the North Pole’s many legacies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and mental flaws. It's late morning on
the polar ice when Eric Larson unzips his tent to
find white out conditions obscuring everything from view. He's had
(00:25):
just a few hours of sleep and he's still overslept. Today,
he and his expedition partner, Ryan Waters are making their
final push to the North Pole, less than four miles away.
But the whipping wind is pushing the big ice flow
where they set up camp southward, and every moment counts.
(00:45):
At this point, the two veteran adventurers have spent fifty
three days inching across the Arctic Sea ice, and today
will be another slog through slushy leads and over hummocks.
When they began planning this expedition, they expected it to
be treacheras that was the point they wanted to show
the world how climate change was already wreaking havoc on
(01:06):
the North Pole. In fact, they're calling this the Last
North Expedition. They predict that their method of reaching the
Pole on foot will soon be impossible. Now it's the
ice groans beneath them. They have to fight to gain
ground in a landscape that wants to undermine their every step.
(01:29):
The roaring wind pushes ice flows apart, revealing open water.
If they're going to make it to the North Pole,
they'll need to down their dry suits, jump in and
start swimming. After eight hours, they're almost there. Larson whips
out his camera waters begins to count down the meters.
(01:50):
At last, the GPS shows the coordinates the two men
have been longing to see, ninety degrees north. There's no
flag waiting to greet them, no plaque denoting what is,
to some explorers the most sought after spot on the map,
just wind and ice and the knowledge that they may
be the last two people to ever reach the North
(02:12):
Pole this way. Once secure in their tent, they tuck
into a tube of prinkles before indulging in a celebratory
meal and sleeping for a solid thirty six hours. By
the time they wake up, the ice has already drifted
nine miles south. The North Pole, the place at the
top of the World Bay and so many before them
(02:33):
have battled to see, is once again out of reach.
One hundred and twelve years after Perry and Henson allegedly
laid claim to the pole and fifty three years after
Ralph Pleistad drove a snowmobile to ninety degrees north. Where
does the legacy of North Pole exploration fit into our world?
(02:53):
And would the explorers of the past even recognize the
Arctic today? We're about to find out from Mental Floss
and I Heart Radio. This is the Quest for the
(03:15):
North Pole. I'm your host Cat Long, science editor at
Mental Floss, and this is our final episode the North Pole. Today.
There is a real irony about our knowledge of the
(03:37):
North Pole. People have spent more than four centuries attempting
to get to the Pole to observe what was there.
They faced incredibly difficult journeys through ice choked seas and
over lands carved by massive glaciers. By the time they
got close in the twentieth century, it was already changing
dramatically because of human activity. Our idea of the North
(04:01):
Pole as observed by the most daring explorers and history
became obsolete and fewer than one hundred years and today,
global warming is changing the Arctic in every way. The
impacts of climate change are evident in its geography. It's oceans, lands, animals,
and people. In our first episode, we said that an
(04:24):
important goal of early Arctic exploration was to locate the
magnetic north Pole. We always knew that the geographic north
pole was at ninety degrees north latitude. That's just the
spot on the map where all the meridians of longitude converge.
But the magnetic north Pole is a different beast. Its
location affects navigational instruments, and when explorers didn't know where
(04:48):
the magnetic pole was, their navigational readings could be way off.
During British explorer John Ross's four year odyssey in the
Northwest Passage from eighteen thirty three, in the ship Victory,
his nephew and crew member James Clark, Ross walked all
over Boothia Peninsula looking for the magnetic north Pole. He
(05:10):
carried a compass with a dipping needle, an instrument that
responded to the proximity of magnetic north by pointing downward.
Near Cape Adelaide, on the western edge of the peninsula,
Ross saw the needle point straight down to the earth
magnetic ground zero. The coordinates were approximately seventy degrees five
(05:31):
minutes north ninety six degrees forty six minutes west, more
than a thousand nautical miles south. Of the geographic North Pole,
but the coordinates for the magnetic North Pole aren't set
in stone or an ice. As of its coordinates were
eighty six point five degrees north and one d sixty
(05:52):
four point zero four degrees east, hundreds of nautical miles
north of where it was when James Clark Ross discovered it.
This change isn't unusual, because, as we mentioned in episode one,
the location of magnetic north has always fluctuated. In the
mid twentieth century, the magnetic North Pole shifted around nine
(06:13):
miles per year, but in recent years it's changed much
more rapidly. As of the early adds, magnetic North was
galloping about thirty four miles per year. The Arctic is
changing rapidly in more noticeable ways. On June, the temperature
in the Siberian village of Verryansk hit one hundred point
(06:36):
four degrees fahrenheit, about thirty degrees above normal. This was
reportedly the hottest temperature ever recorded inside the Arctic Circle,
and it was part of a larger trend. The Arctic
is the warmest it's been in three million years. The
region has warmed around two times faster than the rest
(06:57):
of Earth. In the temperature was at least one point
eight degrees fahrenheit above average in nine out of ten years.
This may seem like a small amount, but it has
massive consequences. It's forcing the region into a positive feedback loop, which,
despite how it sounds, is actually a negative thing. Usually
(07:20):
sea ice reflects up to eight of the sunlight that
strikes it. But as the Arctic warms, ice is replaced
by dark open water, which absorbs light and heat, and
as that open water sucks in more heat from the sun,
more ice melts, and the scary cycle continues. Over the
course of hundreds of years, or you know, the hundreds
(07:42):
of years of this podcast covers, the Arctic has definitely
undergone fluctuations. There's been cold periods and warm periods. There's
there's variability in the system, meaning some years are colder
and summer warmer. That's Kristin Lydra a marine biologist at
the University of Washington. She's been studying Arctic marine mammals
(08:02):
around Greenland for about twenty years, looking at how mammal
populations are adapting to climate change. But what we really
started seeing in the nineteen hundreds, and you know, at
the start of industry and and kind of human activity.
Basically releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is a distinct
warming trend, and the unidirectional warming trend that is is
(08:25):
caused by humans, so basically anthropogenic climate warming, and we've
seen that really manifests itself very strongly. In the Arctic.
The warming trends are are amplified. The Arctic is warming
twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and
you know, big part of that is because the Arctic
is covered in in sea ice and not sea ice
(08:46):
is smelting and breaking up early and really just changing
the whole system for animals and for people that live there.
Record high tempts have also led to record low snow cover,
and that increases the risk for whild fires. Wildfire season
also kicked off earlier than usual. The blazes might have
(09:06):
been triggered by so called zombie fires, which are fires
that's smolder in the dense layer of pete underneath the
snow and ice. Pete lands happened to be the world's
most important terrestrial ecosystem for carbon storage, and when they burn,
tons of greenhouse gases are released into our atmosphere. Higher
(09:27):
attempts are melting permafrost too. While this sometimes reveals cool
fossils like mammoth bones, it also releases a ridiculous amount
of carbon and methane, not to mention super bad stuff
like anthrax, infectious viruses, and other dangerous microbes. And when
permafrost becomes unstable, the ground doesn't hold together as well.
(09:49):
Along Alaska's coast, the equivalent of thirty football fields of
land disappear each year due to erosion. Though past explorer
would definitely have appreciated less ice in their way, climate
scientists cite the decrease in sea ice as one of
the most worrying changes in the Arctic today. In two
(10:10):
thousand seven, after a century of steadily warming temperatures, the
Northwest Passage was completely ice free in summer for the
first time in recorded history. The years since then have
also seen ice free summers, and justice past February, a
commercial ship successfully made a midwinter voyage across the Northeast
(10:34):
Passage that winds around Russia and China, the same route
that defeated William Barrens in the sixteenth century. Here's Andrea Pitzer,
author of Ice Bound Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World,
which tells the story of Barrens's three voyages. In she
retraced Barrens's steps to his hut on Nova Zembla, where
(10:55):
he and his men were forced to spend the winter
in fifteen nine. When I sailed this in August, I
faced no ice at all. We would get to some glaciers,
but there were not icebergs floating out in the water.
But within a week of when I was there is
when they were frozen in more than four years ago.
So that tells you that the entire terrain was ice.
(11:16):
And now there was literally no ice in that region
in August. Now they'll still be ice in the winter,
and there'll be a lot of ice, and it will
still be really difficult to navigate a lot of places.
But there is an expectation that we will actually see
an ice free North Pole a part of the year,
which is really just staggering to think about. And I
(11:37):
say in the book that this open polar see that
Barns imagined came to exist. He just sailed four years
too soon. In the best case scenarios, ice made navigation
difficult for explorers of the past. In the worst cases,
see ice would bash into their ships squeeze them until
they sank or surround them in a solid mass. This
(12:01):
might be less of an issue today because the sea
ice extent, which the United States Environmental Protection Agency defines
as the area of ocean where at least fifteen percent
of the surfaces frozen, is dwindling. Those satellites have been
tracking the conditions only since nineteen seventy nine. Century old
(12:22):
ships log books reveal the sea ice used to be
much more extensive. Satellites have captured drastic changes in the
sea ice minimum. That's the point usually at the end
of the summer when sea ice covers the smallest area
for the whole year. Since nineteen seventy nine, its minimum
has decreased by roughly thirty two thousand square miles every decade,
(12:47):
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's an
area roughly four times the size of Maine. The lowest
sea ice minimum ever recorded happened in sept and was
the second lowest no ice escapes this cycle. Take the
(13:08):
gigantic slabs of paleocristic ice that George strong Naires observed
on his attempt at the North Pole. In These huge
masses are important for seals which make their burrows in
the ice, and polar bears, which hunt the seals for food.
A current called the Beaufort Gyre sends the oldest, thickest
(13:29):
ice churning towards Canada and Greenland's northern shore. It forms
a protective dam across the Nares Strait, blocking older ice
from drifting south to warmer waters. It's what Nears thought
would forever block explorers progress to the north. It's a
nook took name is to vat, which translates to the
(13:50):
place where the ice never melts. But warmer temps make
the barrier weaker, and more of the paleocristic ice, which
we once took for granted would be permanently frozen, is
escaping from the narrow strait and melting away. As a result,
the sea route to the Pole that Nares in the
Alert and Discovery found completely blocked is more open today,
(14:14):
and the ice that remains throughout the year is thinner
and more vulnerable than in the past. The well trodden
American route blazed by Charles Francis Hall, Alicia kent Kine
and Robert Peary in the nineteenth century now looks completely different.
Here's Susan Kaplan, a professor of anthropology and director of
the Pierry McMillan Arctic Museum at Boden College. We had
(14:38):
been working on the centennial of Peri's North Pole expeditions
and had read so many of the journals, and so
we secured National Science Foundation funding and went to the
northeast coast of Ellesmere Island, a place called Cape Sheridan,
(14:58):
where Peery in nineteen o five oh six and nineteen
o eight oh nine had taken the S. S. Roosevelt,
which was his expedition vessel, and frozen it into the
ice off of Cape Sheridan. That part of Elsmere Island
is really a polar desert. It's very very little plant life,
(15:23):
very few animals. When we got there, the coast was
just choked full of ice that was not moving. We
saw one fox, We saw a few geese. We saw
a number of seals. Although it occurred to us that
it was just one seal we saw repeatedly it was.
(15:45):
We saw some polar bear tracks and one musk box.
Do you get the sense that the amount of ice
and the temperature and that kind of thing was similar
to what Perry might have experienced, or do you have
a sense that perhaps there's less ice now than what
he might have seen. There's definitely less ice than what
(16:07):
he would have experienced. We flew from Resolute to Cape Sheridan.
This amazing pilot landed us on on a beach ridge.
But as we flew over of that part of the Arctic,
you could just sea water pouring away off of glaciers
and there was almost no sea ice. And the amount
(16:32):
of sea ice in that part of the Arctic is
greatly diminished, and the temperatures are higher. And we know
this because Puri had some of his crew taking temperature
readings two and three times a day, and so you
can compare them to the contemporary readings, and it's a
(16:54):
transformed Arctic. A consequence of less ice is that more
tips have an easier time getting around the Arctic. Between
and shipping along the Northeast passage increased fifty eight percent.
Not only does this mean more noise, pollution and traffic,
but also invasive species that hitch a ride on the ships,
(17:18):
more efforts to extract Arctic natural resources, and even commercial cruises.
In a cruise traversed the Northwest passage, allowing rich tourists
to browse the same places that explorers had fought tooth
and nail to reach in previous centuries. And some tour
operators really know how to sell the romance of it all.
(17:40):
Tourists are expecting a certain experience. That's p J. Cappellotti,
author of the Greatest Show in the Arctic, The American
Exploration of Francios off Land to five, which recounts expeditions
to these islands and the Russian Arctic. When he visited
Nonsen and Johansen's dugout shelter on francio of Land, he
(18:01):
started photographing some walrus bones next to the hut, thinking
they had been left behind by the explorers in and
one of the Russian guides took me aside and said, oh, yeah,
we put those there a couple of years ago. Because
the tourists are really disappointed that there were no walrus
bones on the site. It wasn't enough that you were
seeing one of the most sacred sites in the history
(18:22):
of Arctic exploration, you know, they had to dress it up.
Before that famous expedition, Nonsen and his hardy band of
Norwegian comrades crossed the Greenland ice sheet, the largest in
the northern Hemisphere, from its east to west coast. In
Robert Pierry and Matthew Henson traversed the ice sheet from
west to east in in Peery's case, they barely made
(18:48):
it back alive. That ice sheet is melting faster than
it has in the last twelve thousand years. Today it's
losing ice seven times faster than it did in the
ninety nineties, and this trend goes way beyond the Arctic lands.
Between and seventeen, Earth lost twenty eight trillion tons of ice.
(19:13):
It is really difficult to imagine how much twenty eight
trillion tons actually is, but here's an attempt at a comparison.
In one of the largest icebergs ever recorded broke off
from Antarctica. It weighed about one trillion tons and it
was a size of Delaware. In the last decade, Earth
(19:35):
has lost a Delaware sized massive ice each year. All
that melting ice gets dumped into the ocean, raising sea
levels around the world. Melt water pouring off Greenland's ice
sheet is one of the largest contributors to rising sea levels.
All that fresh cold water is altering ocean currents, the
(19:58):
type of thing that nonsense second an expedition in the
from was meant to study, We'll be right back. Climate
(20:24):
change is having a major impact on Arctic flora and fauna,
and what would Arctic literature be without encounters with potentially
lethal wildlife. From the polar bears that stalked William Barrens
and the castaways on Nova Zembla, to the walruses and
our walls hunted for their tusks, to the musk ox
that saved Peary and Henson from starvation. Arctic animals provided sustenance, clothing, shelter,
(20:49):
and fuel for every generation of polar explorer and the
Inuit whose entire cultures depend on them. But climate change
is challenging the animals survived vol polar bears, those ferocious
carnivores that menaced explorers, are more often portrayed as victims
of climate change today. The image of an emaciated polar
(21:12):
bear swimming great distances between chunks of sea ice, shaggy
white fur draping from two prominent ribs is a staple
of environmental activism. Some scientists estimate that almost all of
the nineteen polar bear subpopulations across the Arctic could disappear
(21:34):
by the end of this century. Polar bears depend on
sea ice for hunting seals, their main source of food.
The bears need the energy they store from the fat
seals to be able to survive during times when food
is scarce. As more and more ice disappears, the bears
are forced to retreat onto land, where the meals are
(21:56):
few and far between. Fewer foods RUSS means the animals
must go longer without it, and that hurts their ability
to reproduce and raise cubs. Walruses also needs the ice.
It's important for their mating and when they're not hunting food,
these one ton mammals lounge on it in huge groups,
(22:17):
soaking up the Arctic sun. But if there aren't enough
flows to go around, walruses have to swim farther to gather.
In these groups called haulouts. On land, hundreds of walruses
pile onto one spot, which is not ideal when most
of the walruses have a pair of up to three
foot tusks sticking out of their mouths. As anyone who's
(22:40):
ever found themselves stuck in a mosh pit knows, this
type of situation can get very dangerous very fast. Sometimes
these land based haulouts become so large and unwieldy the
walruses trample each other. All of these marine mammals are
closely tied to the sea ice for all the functions
(23:00):
of their lives, as Kristen Lydra explains, for example, the
ice dependent species like the polar bear, all of the
ice seals, which includes the walrus, all of those species
need ice to live. And so when we see this
climate warming in the Arctic happening and increasingly basically making
that ice platform go away or making it break up early,
(23:21):
we see negative effects on all of those species that
require that platform for their life. So they don't have
the kind of foundation for bear and young for example, exactly,
I mean you know they need you know, in the
case of ice seal, they need see ice to make
their dens, which are called layers where they give birth.
They need ice to basically sit on top and nurse
(23:43):
their young. They rest on the ice. Walrisk will actually
passively use ice to be kind of transported around over
shallow areas where they can dive for food. Polar bears
do everything on the ice, including find their primary prey,
which are these ice seals, so they need ice to
walk around and hunt. Know, it's just basically a really
important platform of life for for animals that are uniquely
(24:05):
adapted to that system. It's an interesting thing to think
about in terms of animal adaptation. They're completely dependent on
the ice that a lot of European explorers or American
explorers really just didn't want to have in their way,
and yet it's so critical to the ecosystem there. I mean,
the c ice is extremely harsh, you know, and very
(24:26):
dynamic kind of structure, and you know, it is really
animals that live in the Arctic and use the ice,
they're they're really special. You know, they've really evolved to
basically exploit that ice for everything that can give them.
But there's no doubt that that ice is, you know,
for humans, definitely a challenge. And of course the indigenous
communities that have lived there for thousands of years have
(24:46):
figured out how to use that ice for transportation and
for hunting platforms and things like that. So it's it's
really kind of many, many thousands of years of kind
of learning how to use the ice best. Probably no
animal is more associated with the North Pole than Santa's reindeer,
but even these herbivores are in trouble. In recent years,
(25:08):
reindeer populations have dropped by over fifty and the likely
reasons are not pretty. For instance, longer summers give parasitic
flies like bot flies, more opportunities to lay their eggs
in the cariboos skin or its nose. As you might imagine,
this forces the caribou to spend more time fending off
(25:28):
flies and less time eating, which has a terrible effect
on their populations. Losing caribou would be devastating for the
indigenous people who have a deep cultural connection to them
for food and skins, which are used to make clothing, tents,
and other necessities. Arctic explorers of the past may not
(25:48):
have relied on reindeer to travel Santa style across the ice,
but like the peoples of the far North, they also
relied on them for sustenance. Like the intrepid humans before them,
some animals are extending their ranges northward as the planet warms.
Red foxes, those wily canaids found across vast regions of
the world, have begun their own Arctic expeditions. Their northern
(26:13):
expansion is displacing the native Arctic fox. The opportunistic red
foxes compete for dense sites and food sources and at
times kill the native foxes. This trend is happening in
marine environments too. Here's Kristin Lydra. The ice structures the
whole ecosystem. It structures the plants that bloom in the
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water column and the dough plankton or small fish that
basically can of form the base of the food chain.
And so as we see the Arctic changing, it's looking
less and less like the Arctic and more and more
like the Subarctic or in some cases kind of temperate areas.
And so what happens is as the ice breaks up early,
it enables some of these Subarctic species to move into
(26:58):
the Arctic sooner ice is extending further and further north,
So those animals can extend their range northward and occupy
areas that they otherwise would have been excluded when there
was sea ice present, and they can basically stay for
longer periods in the Arctic. And so what that means is,
you know, we're seeing Subarctic species kind of move in
(27:18):
and expand their ranges, possibly compete for resources with some
of the Arctic species. In some cases they are directly
a problem, like for example, killer whales that are moving
further into the Arctic and they predate on small whales
like blucas and our walls. So there's there's really a
shift happening where what we used to think of as
the Arctic and in a system that only had Arctic species,
(27:41):
is really transforming into something different. We're on a trajectory
towards the sea ice free Arctic in the summer, and
that's going to have huge implications for all of these
animals that depend on that ice. Inoit and other Arctic
peoples have the most to lose from all of these
dramatic shifts intoit assisted explorers and save their lives over
(28:03):
the course of four centuries. Now they're on the front
lines of climate change. All of the threats we've mentioned
so far to animals, ice, sea levels, and more have
a direct impact on polar communities survival. Part of the
work that I do is is working really closely with
communities in Greenland because all of the animals I study
(28:25):
are natural resources and food for them. The animals that
live in the Arctic um you know, the marine and
the trust for animals are just inherently linked to the
people for many thousands of years, you know, those species
have been the source of life for people and biological
resource and provide food and clothing and tools and even
(28:47):
vitamin C, so that they're really, really is a kind
of very close link between people animals in the Arctic. So,
you know, I've made it a point in my career
to talk to people in the community to document what
they're seeing, to basically collect knowledge from people who are
out on the ice and hunting animals. There's no doubt
that all of the you know, changes in the system
(29:08):
that are affecting the animals are also affecting the people,
and they affect people in different ways. Routes that that
hunters would take on their dogs sledges to get to
kind of key hunting grounds are are no longer available
because they've broken up early or or unsafe. People have
had to change some of their strategies for hunting. So,
for example, instead of hunting out on the sea ice
(29:31):
with a team of dogs, they might need to use
small boats because the ice is you know, not present
and they can more easily sail around in a boat
than run dogs on the ice. You know, in some cases,
hunting seasons are truncated or or lost. Storms come in
and blow out the ice and reduce the hunting possibilities
for people. All of these changes shift the distribution of animals,
(29:52):
so sometimes animals you know, are are coming in and
in conflict with people. Polar bears are coming on land
more often and coming into communities. The changes we document
for the animals affect the people, and we really try
to talk to people in communities in Greenland and understand
those changes. Indigenous peoples have also left behind evidence of
(30:12):
their thousands of years in the Arctic. More than one
hundred and eighty thousand archaeological sites are scattered across the Arctic.
Because the region is so cold, items like bones, fabrics,
and skins were once remarkably well preserved in permafrost, but
the warming ground exposes these treasures to decay. Coastal erosion
(30:36):
is also wiping out ancient settlements and burial sites, some
of which contained traces of the earliest known migrations to
North America. One of them was Nuvuka, a smattering of
sod houses and a communal building used by Anuviello at
Whale hunters that the explorer John Franklin observed in Less
(30:57):
than two hundred years later, that site has been laimed
by the sea. Rising seas and falling prima frost are
wiping away Arctic explorer's own marks on the region. Here's
p J. Cappellatti. You know there's still half a dozen
sits in France, Joseph Flann. I've never seen that I'd
love to see, and of course some of them will
be long gone within the next couple of years because
(31:18):
of global climate change. On Francios of Fland, evidence of
Walter Wellman's ill fated North Pole expedition has escaped erosion
thus far. The American journalists turned explorer let an expedition
across Frontios of land in As part of that, they
constructed a hut at Cape Heller, located at the first parallel.
(31:40):
What you can experience in France, Joseph Flant is a
function of what's still left, and typically that involves sites
that were built on hard ground using stones, like Wellman's
Fort McKinley, from where Norwegian who was on the front expedition,
Burn Benson died froze to death, basically starved and froze
to death during Wellman's expedition on New Year's Day. In
(32:04):
After Benson died, his sole companion that winter, spent weeks
living alone in the fort, sleeping beside the corpse of
his dead comrade. Those huts were built out of stone.
They were built up on higher ground, like the Nonsen
hut on at Cape Norwegia. Those sites will survive for
a bit. Other sites that are close to the shoreline,
(32:24):
like the Baldwin huts, those are gone or will be soon.
We'll be right back. Explorers from as recently as the eighteenth, nineteenth,
(32:44):
and twentieth centuries found it impossible to sail to the
North Pole. Ice completely blocked their way and put the
age old theory of an open polar seat to rest.
William Edward Perry off Nonsen, Robert Pierre and others tried
to walk, ski or dog sled to the pole over
solid sea ice. As late as nineteen sixty eight, Ralph
(33:08):
Plystead and his buddies were able to drive snowmobiles to
the North Pole, but today those modes would be virtually impossible.
One of the last human powered expeditions to the Pole
took place inten on their expedition, dubbed Last North American
adventurers Eric Larson and Ryan Waters departed from the coast
(33:30):
of Ellesmere Island, just like Pearry had done in nineteen
o nine, over four hundred nautical miles from the pole.
But that was about all they had in common with
the explorers of a century before. Larson and Waters traded
the traditional sled dogs for skis and snowshoes. They dragged
their three hundred and seventeen pounds sleds behind them across
(33:52):
the ice. They were alone and entirely unsupported. There was
no team of explorers helping them break ground, no strategically
planned food drops to replenish their supplies. They worked like
the human versions of a dog sledding team, hitching themselves
to one sled at a time to lug them up
(34:12):
and over the twenty foot tall ice ridges that fragmented
their root. Instead of donning handmade for suits like Perry
and Henson, Larson and Waters looked as though they just
stepped out of ri i. They wore layers and layers
of marino wool and down garments and heavy duty boots
to stave off the freezing temperatures rather than ration pemmican
(34:35):
and ship's biscuit. Their food provisions included state of the
art dehydrated meals, plus some things anyone could pick up
at a local grocery store. To ensure they could scarf
down over seven thousand calories per day, they packed energy bars, salami, cheese, nuts, sprinkles,
and three bags of cheese buffs, which were designated as
(34:57):
a celebratory treat. Perhaps most surprisingly, the two men also
packed twenty five servings of freeze dried ice cream, because
nothing creates a craving for ice cream like spending weeks
in a frozen landscape. But even with high tech gear
and abundance of high calorie food, Larson and Waters battled
(35:17):
for survival on their journey to the pole. Like Robert Pierry,
they didn't take kayaks or rafts with them to cross
open water. They had dry suits, and they swam. Those
waterproof suits were crucial to their success. Cracks in the
ice revealed great ribbons of open water all the way
(35:38):
to the horizon, where these gaps blocked their progress. The
two men swam, pulling their buoyant sledges while paddling and
kicking with their limbs. They had to act as their
own icebreakers to shatter ice that was too thin to
walk across but too thick to easily swim through. Air
trapped in their dry suits kept them afloat, but smashing
(36:01):
a path forward then pulling themselves back atop solid ice
like seals flopping on shore was exhausting. Even the miles
they trekked across solid ice were perilous. It's hard to
keep a steady pace when the ground beneath your feet
is always changing. Ice that in some places was thick
and solid was in other areas so deceivingly thin. One
(36:24):
wrong step could send an explore plunging into freezing water.
It cracked around them as they slept, and threatened to
shatter beneath them as they inched forward. Relentless wind sent
the ice flows careening southward as the men fought to
continue north. In the time it took them to pause
(36:44):
and down their dry suits before swimming across the lead,
the ice flows would drift south and set them back
by as much as a quarter mile. Polar Bear prints
in the snow were unnerving reminders that in the Arctic
it's not just the ice and coal that can leave
a man fighting for his life. On day five of
(37:05):
the expedition, a mother polar bear in her cub came
within fifteen feet of Larsen and Waters. As they slogged forward,
their noses twitched as the men's sense wafted through the
crisp air. Waters fired its flare, but the bears remained unfazed.
The yearling cub, which weighed several hundred pounds, started forward,
(37:27):
investigating what must have seemed like strange looking seals lumbering
upright across the frozen ground. Larson, realizing his gun was nearby,
shot into the air and was finally able to scare
the bears away. Their muscles ached and sores speckled their skin.
Stress and exhaustion frayed their nerves. Even worse, they were
(37:50):
low on food. The thin, erratic ice slowed their forward
progression to a crawl. By day forty, the two realized
they need to rastically increase their pace if they had
any hope of setting foot at the top of the world.
But since they couldn't ski any faster, they'd have to
go harder. They slept for just four hours at a
(38:11):
time and spent up to fifteen hours a day, attempting
to gain miles across the dicey landscape. Each step was
like playing Russian Roulette with the ice. On day fifty three,
Larsen and Waters finally reached the North Pole a mirror.
Forty two hours later, a small plane dropped from the
sky to scoop them up and ferry them back to civilization.
(38:34):
Within moments of liftoff, the limitless patchwork of ice and
water they had traversed vanished beneath the clouds. The dangerous
conditions they encountered reinforced the assumption at the last North
Expedition would be one of the final human powered trucks
to the Pole. Adventurers of the future who want to
follow in perides, plasteads, or even Larsen's footsteps are likely
(38:58):
out of luck. The sea ice that forms at the
pole each year rarely touches land, but that doesn't mean
the North Pole is out of reach. Today's adventurers, scientists,
and even tourists regularly visit the top of the world,
but their modes of travel are thoroughly modern. Most arrived
(39:19):
near the Pole by research ship or cruise vessel. After
a few hours, they returned to the ship. The price
for this momentary contact runs about thirty dollars a pop.
The recent Mosaic expeditions sought to recreate Frit Jeff Nonsen's
famous voyage in the From which we talked about in
our third episode, to study polar ocean currents. Nonsen purposefully
(39:42):
got his small ships stuck into polar ice and let
the currents take it where they may. The international team
of scientists on the Mosaic expedition did the same thing
with their modern icebreaker Polar Stern. The vessel remained ice
bound while the researchers made scientific observations of climate change
and compared their data to nonsense from the eight nineties.
(40:05):
Nonson eventually realized the currents wouldn't take the from to
the Pole, so he attempted to get there by dogs lad.
In contrast, in August, the Polar Stern sailed easily to
the North Pole amid slushy flows, not the solid ice
fields of yesteryear. A series of aerial photographs taken on
(40:26):
the day the ship reached ninety degrees north shows the
surface of the Arctic Ocean as well a mosaic of thin,
patchy ice, streams of slush, and blue water. Climate scientists
are fond of saying what happens in the Arctic doesn't
stay in the Arctic. It's easy to think of the
Arctic or the North Pole as a place that's not
(40:49):
only geographically distant, but someplace far away from modern civilization.
That's how Europeans in the early nineteenth century were able
to romanticize the Arctic. They projected their hopes and dreams
upon what they considered a blank slate, those empty spaces
on the map. The polar regions appeared pure, sublime and tantalizing,
(41:12):
something to be celebrated in poetry and tamed by technology.
But today we know that isn't the whole picture. Explorers
went ever farther into uncharted territory. They observed the people,
the animals, the climate. They mapped coastlines, islands, and waterways,
(41:32):
and as they studied and learned more about the Arctic,
they realized it was not as remote as they had thought.
I believe we're still learning this lesson. The actions that
we take today have a direct effect on the Arctic,
and those effects will reverberate back to us. Here's Kristin
(41:53):
Lydra I mean, what happens in the Arctic influences the
whole world. The fresh water that melts off of for example,
the England ice cap plays a big role in ocean circulation,
and that circulation is linked to major currents that basically,
you know, control our our climate system throughout the globe.
Something like the Greenland ice cap is kind of an
(42:13):
important reservoir of frozen fresh water, and as that melts,
you know a lot of things you hear about our
sea level rise and so increasing warming and the Arctic
accelerates melt of that ice cap and will affect coastlines
around the world. Those are just two simplified examples of
how connected we are to the Arctic, no matter where
we live or whether we'll ever go there. I became
(42:37):
interested in Arctic history because of my familial connection to it.
Reading about explorers and their expeditions was how I came
to understand some of the perils that region is facing now.
My hope is that by listening to the daring adventures
and complex personalities of the past, we all learn to
care more about the present and future Arctic. Caring about
(43:00):
something is the first step towards protecting it and we
need to include everyone in that story. An inescapable fact
of polar exploration is that it was conducted mainly by Westerners,
who were mainly white and mainly men. Many explorers left
a harmful legacy among the native communities they encountered and
(43:22):
places they went. Because of that, people who aren't in
this privileged group might feel like the story of exploration
isn't theirs or has no relevance to their lives. But
climate change in the Arctic affects everyone, and only collectively
can we try to stop it. We must tell stories
that are more inclusive and about why the Arctics, past, present,
(43:46):
and future is important, so everyone is engaged in protecting
the natural heritage of our planet. The quest for the
North Pole is more than the people who tried to
reach it or succeeded in conquering it. It's a doorway
through which we can examine our own history and human nature.
It's a symbol for the human desire for knowledge and
(44:07):
the struggle to understand ourselves. It reveals our shortcomings and
urges us towards action. Whether we learn from the past
and take action now is the choice we face. The
(44:40):
quest for the North Pole is hosted by Me Cat Long.
This episode was researched by Me and Carrie Wolf and
written by Carry Wolf, with fact checking by Austin Thompson.
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. The
supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. The show is edited by
Dylan fa Again. Thanks to our experts Andrea Pitzer, p J. Cappellotti,
(45:05):
Susan Kaplan, and Kristen Lydra for transcripts, a glossary, and
to learn more about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot
com slash podcast. The Quest for the North Pole is
a production of I heart Radio and Mental Flaws. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
(45:27):
podcasts m M. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
(46:03):
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and mental flaws. It's late morning on
the polar ice when Eric Larson unzips his tent to
find white out conditions obscuring everything from view. He's had
(00:25):
just a few hours of sleep and he's still overslept. Today,
he and his expedition partner, Ryan Waters are making their
final push to the North Pole, less than four miles away.
But the whipping wind is pushing the big ice flow
where they set up camp southward, and every moment counts.
(00:45):
At this point, the two veteran adventurers have spent fifty
three days inching across the Arctic Sea ice, and today
will be another slog through slushy leads and over hummocks.
When they began planning this expedition, they expected it to
be treacheras that was the point they wanted to show
the world how climate change was already wreaking havoc on
(01:06):
the North Pole. In fact, they're calling this the Last
North Expedition. They predict that their method of reaching the
Pole on foot will soon be impossible. Now it's the
ice groans beneath them. They have to fight to gain
ground in a landscape that wants to undermine their every step.
(01:29):
The roaring wind pushes ice flows apart, revealing open water.
If they're going to make it to the North Pole,
they'll need to down their dry suits, jump in and
start swimming. After eight hours, they're almost there. Larson whips
out his camera waters begins to count down the meters.
(01:50):
At last, the GPS shows the coordinates the two men
have been longing to see, ninety degrees north. There's no
flag waiting to greet them, no plaque denoting what is,
to some explorers the most sought after spot on the map,
just wind and ice and the knowledge that they may
be the last two people to ever reach the North
(02:12):
Pole this way. Once secure in their tent, they tuck
into a tube of prinkles before indulging in a celebratory
meal and sleeping for a solid thirty six hours. By
the time they wake up, the ice has already drifted
nine miles south. The North Pole, the place at the
top of the World Bay and so many before them
(02:33):
have battled to see, is once again out of reach.
One hundred and twelve years after Perry and Henson allegedly
laid claim to the pole and fifty three years after
Ralph Pleistad drove a snowmobile to ninety degrees north. Where
does the legacy of North Pole exploration fit into our world?
(02:53):
And would the explorers of the past even recognize the
Arctic today? We're about to find out from Mental Floss
and I Heart Radio. This is the Quest for the
(03:15):
North Pole. I'm your host Cat Long, science editor at
Mental Floss, and this is our final episode the North Pole. Today.
There is a real irony about our knowledge of the
(03:37):
North Pole. People have spent more than four centuries attempting
to get to the Pole to observe what was there.
They faced incredibly difficult journeys through ice choked seas and
over lands carved by massive glaciers. By the time they
got close in the twentieth century, it was already changing
dramatically because of human activity. Our idea of the North
(04:01):
Pole as observed by the most daring explorers and history
became obsolete and fewer than one hundred years and today,
global warming is changing the Arctic in every way. The
impacts of climate change are evident in its geography. It's oceans, lands, animals,
and people. In our first episode, we said that an
(04:24):
important goal of early Arctic exploration was to locate the
magnetic north Pole. We always knew that the geographic north
pole was at ninety degrees north latitude. That's just the
spot on the map where all the meridians of longitude converge.
But the magnetic north Pole is a different beast. Its
location affects navigational instruments, and when explorers didn't know where
(04:48):
the magnetic pole was, their navigational readings could be way off.
During British explorer John Ross's four year odyssey in the
Northwest Passage from eighteen thirty three, in the ship Victory,
his nephew and crew member James Clark, Ross walked all
over Boothia Peninsula looking for the magnetic north Pole. He
(05:10):
carried a compass with a dipping needle, an instrument that
responded to the proximity of magnetic north by pointing downward.
Near Cape Adelaide, on the western edge of the peninsula,
Ross saw the needle point straight down to the earth
magnetic ground zero. The coordinates were approximately seventy degrees five
(05:31):
minutes north ninety six degrees forty six minutes west, more
than a thousand nautical miles south. Of the geographic North Pole,
but the coordinates for the magnetic North Pole aren't set
in stone or an ice. As of its coordinates were
eighty six point five degrees north and one d sixty
(05:52):
four point zero four degrees east, hundreds of nautical miles
north of where it was when James Clark Ross discovered it.
This change isn't unusual, because, as we mentioned in episode one,
the location of magnetic north has always fluctuated. In the
mid twentieth century, the magnetic North Pole shifted around nine
(06:13):
miles per year, but in recent years it's changed much
more rapidly. As of the early adds, magnetic North was
galloping about thirty four miles per year. The Arctic is
changing rapidly in more noticeable ways. On June, the temperature
in the Siberian village of Verryansk hit one hundred point
(06:36):
four degrees fahrenheit, about thirty degrees above normal. This was
reportedly the hottest temperature ever recorded inside the Arctic Circle,
and it was part of a larger trend. The Arctic
is the warmest it's been in three million years. The
region has warmed around two times faster than the rest
(06:57):
of Earth. In the temperature was at least one point
eight degrees fahrenheit above average in nine out of ten years.
This may seem like a small amount, but it has
massive consequences. It's forcing the region into a positive feedback loop, which,
despite how it sounds, is actually a negative thing. Usually
(07:20):
sea ice reflects up to eight of the sunlight that
strikes it. But as the Arctic warms, ice is replaced
by dark open water, which absorbs light and heat, and
as that open water sucks in more heat from the sun,
more ice melts, and the scary cycle continues. Over the
course of hundreds of years, or you know, the hundreds
(07:42):
of years of this podcast covers, the Arctic has definitely
undergone fluctuations. There's been cold periods and warm periods. There's
there's variability in the system, meaning some years are colder
and summer warmer. That's Kristin Lydra a marine biologist at
the University of Washington. She's been studying Arctic marine mammals
(08:02):
around Greenland for about twenty years, looking at how mammal
populations are adapting to climate change. But what we really
started seeing in the nineteen hundreds, and you know, at
the start of industry and and kind of human activity.
Basically releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is a distinct
warming trend, and the unidirectional warming trend that is is
(08:25):
caused by humans, so basically anthropogenic climate warming, and we've
seen that really manifests itself very strongly. In the Arctic.
The warming trends are are amplified. The Arctic is warming
twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and
you know, big part of that is because the Arctic
is covered in in sea ice and not sea ice
(08:46):
is smelting and breaking up early and really just changing
the whole system for animals and for people that live there.
Record high tempts have also led to record low snow cover,
and that increases the risk for whild fires. Wildfire season
also kicked off earlier than usual. The blazes might have
(09:06):
been triggered by so called zombie fires, which are fires
that's smolder in the dense layer of pete underneath the
snow and ice. Pete lands happened to be the world's
most important terrestrial ecosystem for carbon storage, and when they burn,
tons of greenhouse gases are released into our atmosphere. Higher
(09:27):
attempts are melting permafrost too. While this sometimes reveals cool
fossils like mammoth bones, it also releases a ridiculous amount
of carbon and methane, not to mention super bad stuff
like anthrax, infectious viruses, and other dangerous microbes. And when
permafrost becomes unstable, the ground doesn't hold together as well.
(09:49):
Along Alaska's coast, the equivalent of thirty football fields of
land disappear each year due to erosion. Though past explorer
would definitely have appreciated less ice in their way, climate
scientists cite the decrease in sea ice as one of
the most worrying changes in the Arctic today. In two
(10:10):
thousand seven, after a century of steadily warming temperatures, the
Northwest Passage was completely ice free in summer for the
first time in recorded history. The years since then have
also seen ice free summers, and justice past February, a
commercial ship successfully made a midwinter voyage across the Northeast
(10:34):
Passage that winds around Russia and China, the same route
that defeated William Barrens in the sixteenth century. Here's Andrea Pitzer,
author of Ice Bound Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World,
which tells the story of Barrens's three voyages. In she
retraced Barrens's steps to his hut on Nova Zembla, where
(10:55):
he and his men were forced to spend the winter
in fifteen nine. When I sailed this in August, I
faced no ice at all. We would get to some glaciers,
but there were not icebergs floating out in the water.
But within a week of when I was there is
when they were frozen in more than four years ago.
So that tells you that the entire terrain was ice.
(11:16):
And now there was literally no ice in that region
in August. Now they'll still be ice in the winter,
and there'll be a lot of ice, and it will
still be really difficult to navigate a lot of places.
But there is an expectation that we will actually see
an ice free North Pole a part of the year,
which is really just staggering to think about. And I
(11:37):
say in the book that this open polar see that
Barns imagined came to exist. He just sailed four years
too soon. In the best case scenarios, ice made navigation
difficult for explorers of the past. In the worst cases,
see ice would bash into their ships squeeze them until
they sank or surround them in a solid mass. This
(12:01):
might be less of an issue today because the sea
ice extent, which the United States Environmental Protection Agency defines
as the area of ocean where at least fifteen percent
of the surfaces frozen, is dwindling. Those satellites have been
tracking the conditions only since nineteen seventy nine. Century old
(12:22):
ships log books reveal the sea ice used to be
much more extensive. Satellites have captured drastic changes in the
sea ice minimum. That's the point usually at the end
of the summer when sea ice covers the smallest area
for the whole year. Since nineteen seventy nine, its minimum
has decreased by roughly thirty two thousand square miles every decade,
(12:47):
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's an
area roughly four times the size of Maine. The lowest
sea ice minimum ever recorded happened in sept and was
the second lowest no ice escapes this cycle. Take the
(13:08):
gigantic slabs of paleocristic ice that George strong Naires observed
on his attempt at the North Pole. In These huge
masses are important for seals which make their burrows in
the ice, and polar bears, which hunt the seals for food.
A current called the Beaufort Gyre sends the oldest, thickest
(13:29):
ice churning towards Canada and Greenland's northern shore. It forms
a protective dam across the Nares Strait, blocking older ice
from drifting south to warmer waters. It's what Nears thought
would forever block explorers progress to the north. It's a
nook took name is to vat, which translates to the
(13:50):
place where the ice never melts. But warmer temps make
the barrier weaker, and more of the paleocristic ice, which
we once took for granted would be permanently frozen, is
escaping from the narrow strait and melting away. As a result,
the sea route to the Pole that Nares in the
Alert and Discovery found completely blocked is more open today,
(14:14):
and the ice that remains throughout the year is thinner
and more vulnerable than in the past. The well trodden
American route blazed by Charles Francis Hall, Alicia kent Kine
and Robert Peary in the nineteenth century now looks completely different.
Here's Susan Kaplan, a professor of anthropology and director of
the Pierry McMillan Arctic Museum at Boden College. We had
(14:38):
been working on the centennial of Peri's North Pole expeditions
and had read so many of the journals, and so
we secured National Science Foundation funding and went to the
northeast coast of Ellesmere Island, a place called Cape Sheridan,
(14:58):
where Peery in nineteen o five oh six and nineteen
o eight oh nine had taken the S. S. Roosevelt,
which was his expedition vessel, and frozen it into the
ice off of Cape Sheridan. That part of Elsmere Island
is really a polar desert. It's very very little plant life,
(15:23):
very few animals. When we got there, the coast was
just choked full of ice that was not moving. We
saw one fox, We saw a few geese. We saw
a number of seals. Although it occurred to us that
it was just one seal we saw repeatedly it was.
(15:45):
We saw some polar bear tracks and one musk box.
Do you get the sense that the amount of ice
and the temperature and that kind of thing was similar
to what Perry might have experienced, or do you have
a sense that perhaps there's less ice now than what
he might have seen. There's definitely less ice than what
(16:07):
he would have experienced. We flew from Resolute to Cape Sheridan.
This amazing pilot landed us on on a beach ridge.
But as we flew over of that part of the Arctic,
you could just sea water pouring away off of glaciers
and there was almost no sea ice. And the amount
(16:32):
of sea ice in that part of the Arctic is
greatly diminished, and the temperatures are higher. And we know
this because Puri had some of his crew taking temperature
readings two and three times a day, and so you
can compare them to the contemporary readings, and it's a
(16:54):
transformed Arctic. A consequence of less ice is that more
tips have an easier time getting around the Arctic. Between
and shipping along the Northeast passage increased fifty eight percent.
Not only does this mean more noise, pollution and traffic,
but also invasive species that hitch a ride on the ships,
(17:18):
more efforts to extract Arctic natural resources, and even commercial cruises.
In a cruise traversed the Northwest passage, allowing rich tourists
to browse the same places that explorers had fought tooth
and nail to reach in previous centuries. And some tour
operators really know how to sell the romance of it all.
(17:40):
Tourists are expecting a certain experience. That's p J. Cappellotti,
author of the Greatest Show in the Arctic, The American
Exploration of Francios off Land to five, which recounts expeditions
to these islands and the Russian Arctic. When he visited
Nonsen and Johansen's dugout shelter on francio of Land, he
(18:01):
started photographing some walrus bones next to the hut, thinking
they had been left behind by the explorers in and
one of the Russian guides took me aside and said, oh, yeah,
we put those there a couple of years ago. Because
the tourists are really disappointed that there were no walrus
bones on the site. It wasn't enough that you were
seeing one of the most sacred sites in the history
(18:22):
of Arctic exploration, you know, they had to dress it up.
Before that famous expedition, Nonsen and his hardy band of
Norwegian comrades crossed the Greenland ice sheet, the largest in
the northern Hemisphere, from its east to west coast. In
Robert Pierry and Matthew Henson traversed the ice sheet from
west to east in in Peery's case, they barely made
(18:48):
it back alive. That ice sheet is melting faster than
it has in the last twelve thousand years. Today it's
losing ice seven times faster than it did in the
ninety nineties, and this trend goes way beyond the Arctic lands.
Between and seventeen, Earth lost twenty eight trillion tons of ice.
(19:13):
It is really difficult to imagine how much twenty eight
trillion tons actually is, but here's an attempt at a comparison.
In one of the largest icebergs ever recorded broke off
from Antarctica. It weighed about one trillion tons and it
was a size of Delaware. In the last decade, Earth
(19:35):
has lost a Delaware sized massive ice each year. All
that melting ice gets dumped into the ocean, raising sea
levels around the world. Melt water pouring off Greenland's ice
sheet is one of the largest contributors to rising sea levels.
All that fresh cold water is altering ocean currents, the
(19:58):
type of thing that nonsense second an expedition in the
from was meant to study, We'll be right back. Climate
(20:24):
change is having a major impact on Arctic flora and fauna,
and what would Arctic literature be without encounters with potentially
lethal wildlife. From the polar bears that stalked William Barrens
and the castaways on Nova Zembla, to the walruses and
our walls hunted for their tusks, to the musk ox
that saved Peary and Henson from starvation. Arctic animals provided sustenance, clothing, shelter,
(20:49):
and fuel for every generation of polar explorer and the
Inuit whose entire cultures depend on them. But climate change
is challenging the animals survived vol polar bears, those ferocious
carnivores that menaced explorers, are more often portrayed as victims
of climate change today. The image of an emaciated polar
(21:12):
bear swimming great distances between chunks of sea ice, shaggy
white fur draping from two prominent ribs is a staple
of environmental activism. Some scientists estimate that almost all of
the nineteen polar bear subpopulations across the Arctic could disappear
(21:34):
by the end of this century. Polar bears depend on
sea ice for hunting seals, their main source of food.
The bears need the energy they store from the fat
seals to be able to survive during times when food
is scarce. As more and more ice disappears, the bears
are forced to retreat onto land, where the meals are
(21:56):
few and far between. Fewer foods RUSS means the animals
must go longer without it, and that hurts their ability
to reproduce and raise cubs. Walruses also needs the ice.
It's important for their mating and when they're not hunting food,
these one ton mammals lounge on it in huge groups,
(22:17):
soaking up the Arctic sun. But if there aren't enough
flows to go around, walruses have to swim farther to gather.
In these groups called haulouts. On land, hundreds of walruses
pile onto one spot, which is not ideal when most
of the walruses have a pair of up to three
foot tusks sticking out of their mouths. As anyone who's
(22:40):
ever found themselves stuck in a mosh pit knows, this
type of situation can get very dangerous very fast. Sometimes
these land based haulouts become so large and unwieldy the
walruses trample each other. All of these marine mammals are
closely tied to the sea ice for all the functions
(23:00):
of their lives, as Kristen Lydra explains, for example, the
ice dependent species like the polar bear, all of the
ice seals, which includes the walrus, all of those species
need ice to live. And so when we see this
climate warming in the Arctic happening and increasingly basically making
that ice platform go away or making it break up early,
(23:21):
we see negative effects on all of those species that
require that platform for their life. So they don't have
the kind of foundation for bear and young for example, exactly,
I mean you know they need you know, in the
case of ice seal, they need see ice to make
their dens, which are called layers where they give birth.
They need ice to basically sit on top and nurse
(23:43):
their young. They rest on the ice. Walrisk will actually
passively use ice to be kind of transported around over
shallow areas where they can dive for food. Polar bears
do everything on the ice, including find their primary prey,
which are these ice seals, so they need ice to
walk around and hunt. Know, it's just basically a really
important platform of life for for animals that are uniquely
(24:05):
adapted to that system. It's an interesting thing to think
about in terms of animal adaptation. They're completely dependent on
the ice that a lot of European explorers or American
explorers really just didn't want to have in their way,
and yet it's so critical to the ecosystem there. I mean,
the c ice is extremely harsh, you know, and very
(24:26):
dynamic kind of structure, and you know, it is really
animals that live in the Arctic and use the ice,
they're they're really special. You know, they've really evolved to
basically exploit that ice for everything that can give them.
But there's no doubt that that ice is, you know,
for humans, definitely a challenge. And of course the indigenous
communities that have lived there for thousands of years have
(24:46):
figured out how to use that ice for transportation and
for hunting platforms and things like that. So it's it's
really kind of many, many thousands of years of kind
of learning how to use the ice best. Probably no
animal is more associated with the North Pole than Santa's reindeer,
but even these herbivores are in trouble. In recent years,
(25:08):
reindeer populations have dropped by over fifty and the likely
reasons are not pretty. For instance, longer summers give parasitic
flies like bot flies, more opportunities to lay their eggs
in the cariboos skin or its nose. As you might imagine,
this forces the caribou to spend more time fending off
(25:28):
flies and less time eating, which has a terrible effect
on their populations. Losing caribou would be devastating for the
indigenous people who have a deep cultural connection to them
for food and skins, which are used to make clothing, tents,
and other necessities. Arctic explorers of the past may not
(25:48):
have relied on reindeer to travel Santa style across the ice,
but like the peoples of the far North, they also
relied on them for sustenance. Like the intrepid humans before them,
some animals are extending their ranges northward as the planet warms.
Red foxes, those wily canaids found across vast regions of
the world, have begun their own Arctic expeditions. Their northern
(26:13):
expansion is displacing the native Arctic fox. The opportunistic red
foxes compete for dense sites and food sources and at
times kill the native foxes. This trend is happening in
marine environments too. Here's Kristin Lydra. The ice structures the
whole ecosystem. It structures the plants that bloom in the
(26:35):
water column and the dough plankton or small fish that
basically can of form the base of the food chain.
And so as we see the Arctic changing, it's looking
less and less like the Arctic and more and more
like the Subarctic or in some cases kind of temperate areas.
And so what happens is as the ice breaks up early,
it enables some of these Subarctic species to move into
(26:58):
the Arctic sooner ice is extending further and further north,
So those animals can extend their range northward and occupy
areas that they otherwise would have been excluded when there
was sea ice present, and they can basically stay for
longer periods in the Arctic. And so what that means is,
you know, we're seeing Subarctic species kind of move in
(27:18):
and expand their ranges, possibly compete for resources with some
of the Arctic species. In some cases they are directly
a problem, like for example, killer whales that are moving
further into the Arctic and they predate on small whales
like blucas and our walls. So there's there's really a
shift happening where what we used to think of as
the Arctic and in a system that only had Arctic species,
(27:41):
is really transforming into something different. We're on a trajectory
towards the sea ice free Arctic in the summer, and
that's going to have huge implications for all of these
animals that depend on that ice. Inoit and other Arctic
peoples have the most to lose from all of these
dramatic shifts intoit assisted explorers and save their lives over
(28:03):
the course of four centuries. Now they're on the front
lines of climate change. All of the threats we've mentioned
so far to animals, ice, sea levels, and more have
a direct impact on polar communities survival. Part of the
work that I do is is working really closely with
communities in Greenland because all of the animals I study
(28:25):
are natural resources and food for them. The animals that
live in the Arctic um you know, the marine and
the trust for animals are just inherently linked to the
people for many thousands of years, you know, those species
have been the source of life for people and biological
resource and provide food and clothing and tools and even
(28:47):
vitamin C, so that they're really, really is a kind
of very close link between people animals in the Arctic. So,
you know, I've made it a point in my career
to talk to people in the community to document what
they're seeing, to basically collect knowledge from people who are
out on the ice and hunting animals. There's no doubt
that all of the you know, changes in the system
(29:08):
that are affecting the animals are also affecting the people,
and they affect people in different ways. Routes that that
hunters would take on their dogs sledges to get to
kind of key hunting grounds are are no longer available
because they've broken up early or or unsafe. People have
had to change some of their strategies for hunting. So,
for example, instead of hunting out on the sea ice
(29:31):
with a team of dogs, they might need to use
small boats because the ice is you know, not present
and they can more easily sail around in a boat
than run dogs on the ice. You know, in some cases,
hunting seasons are truncated or or lost. Storms come in
and blow out the ice and reduce the hunting possibilities
for people. All of these changes shift the distribution of animals,
(29:52):
so sometimes animals you know, are are coming in and
in conflict with people. Polar bears are coming on land
more often and coming into communities. The changes we document
for the animals affect the people, and we really try
to talk to people in communities in Greenland and understand
those changes. Indigenous peoples have also left behind evidence of
(30:12):
their thousands of years in the Arctic. More than one
hundred and eighty thousand archaeological sites are scattered across the Arctic.
Because the region is so cold, items like bones, fabrics,
and skins were once remarkably well preserved in permafrost, but
the warming ground exposes these treasures to decay. Coastal erosion
(30:36):
is also wiping out ancient settlements and burial sites, some
of which contained traces of the earliest known migrations to
North America. One of them was Nuvuka, a smattering of
sod houses and a communal building used by Anuviello at
Whale hunters that the explorer John Franklin observed in Less
(30:57):
than two hundred years later, that site has been laimed
by the sea. Rising seas and falling prima frost are
wiping away Arctic explorer's own marks on the region. Here's
p J. Cappellatti. You know there's still half a dozen
sits in France, Joseph Flann. I've never seen that I'd
love to see, and of course some of them will
be long gone within the next couple of years because
(31:18):
of global climate change. On Francios of Fland, evidence of
Walter Wellman's ill fated North Pole expedition has escaped erosion
thus far. The American journalists turned explorer let an expedition
across Frontios of land in As part of that, they
constructed a hut at Cape Heller, located at the first parallel.
(31:40):
What you can experience in France, Joseph Flant is a
function of what's still left, and typically that involves sites
that were built on hard ground using stones, like Wellman's
Fort McKinley, from where Norwegian who was on the front expedition,
Burn Benson died froze to death, basically starved and froze
to death during Wellman's expedition on New Year's Day. In
(32:04):
After Benson died, his sole companion that winter, spent weeks
living alone in the fort, sleeping beside the corpse of
his dead comrade. Those huts were built out of stone.
They were built up on higher ground, like the Nonsen
hut on at Cape Norwegia. Those sites will survive for
a bit. Other sites that are close to the shoreline,
(32:24):
like the Baldwin huts, those are gone or will be soon.
We'll be right back. Explorers from as recently as the eighteenth, nineteenth,
(32:44):
and twentieth centuries found it impossible to sail to the
North Pole. Ice completely blocked their way and put the
age old theory of an open polar seat to rest.
William Edward Perry off Nonsen, Robert Pierre and others tried
to walk, ski or dog sled to the pole over
solid sea ice. As late as nineteen sixty eight, Ralph
(33:08):
Plystead and his buddies were able to drive snowmobiles to
the North Pole, but today those modes would be virtually impossible.
One of the last human powered expeditions to the Pole
took place inten on their expedition, dubbed Last North American
adventurers Eric Larson and Ryan Waters departed from the coast
(33:30):
of Ellesmere Island, just like Pearry had done in nineteen
o nine, over four hundred nautical miles from the pole.
But that was about all they had in common with
the explorers of a century before. Larson and Waters traded
the traditional sled dogs for skis and snowshoes. They dragged
their three hundred and seventeen pounds sleds behind them across
(33:52):
the ice. They were alone and entirely unsupported. There was
no team of explorers helping them break ground, no strategically
planned food drops to replenish their supplies. They worked like
the human versions of a dog sledding team, hitching themselves
to one sled at a time to lug them up
(34:12):
and over the twenty foot tall ice ridges that fragmented
their root. Instead of donning handmade for suits like Perry
and Henson, Larson and Waters looked as though they just
stepped out of ri i. They wore layers and layers
of marino wool and down garments and heavy duty boots
to stave off the freezing temperatures rather than ration pemmican
(34:35):
and ship's biscuit. Their food provisions included state of the
art dehydrated meals, plus some things anyone could pick up
at a local grocery store. To ensure they could scarf
down over seven thousand calories per day, they packed energy bars, salami, cheese, nuts, sprinkles,
and three bags of cheese buffs, which were designated as
(34:57):
a celebratory treat. Perhaps most surprisingly, the two men also
packed twenty five servings of freeze dried ice cream, because
nothing creates a craving for ice cream like spending weeks
in a frozen landscape. But even with high tech gear
and abundance of high calorie food, Larson and Waters battled
(35:17):
for survival on their journey to the pole. Like Robert Pierry,
they didn't take kayaks or rafts with them to cross
open water. They had dry suits, and they swam. Those
waterproof suits were crucial to their success. Cracks in the
ice revealed great ribbons of open water all the way
(35:38):
to the horizon, where these gaps blocked their progress. The
two men swam, pulling their buoyant sledges while paddling and
kicking with their limbs. They had to act as their
own icebreakers to shatter ice that was too thin to
walk across but too thick to easily swim through. Air
trapped in their dry suits kept them afloat, but smashing
(36:01):
a path forward then pulling themselves back atop solid ice
like seals flopping on shore was exhausting. Even the miles
they trekked across solid ice were perilous. It's hard to
keep a steady pace when the ground beneath your feet
is always changing. Ice that in some places was thick
and solid was in other areas so deceivingly thin. One
(36:24):
wrong step could send an explore plunging into freezing water.
It cracked around them as they slept, and threatened to
shatter beneath them as they inched forward. Relentless wind sent
the ice flows careening southward as the men fought to
continue north. In the time it took them to pause
(36:44):
and down their dry suits before swimming across the lead,
the ice flows would drift south and set them back
by as much as a quarter mile. Polar Bear prints
in the snow were unnerving reminders that in the Arctic
it's not just the ice and coal that can leave
a man fighting for his life. On day five of
(37:05):
the expedition, a mother polar bear in her cub came
within fifteen feet of Larsen and Waters. As they slogged forward,
their noses twitched as the men's sense wafted through the
crisp air. Waters fired its flare, but the bears remained unfazed.
The yearling cub, which weighed several hundred pounds, started forward,
(37:27):
investigating what must have seemed like strange looking seals lumbering
upright across the frozen ground. Larson, realizing his gun was nearby,
shot into the air and was finally able to scare
the bears away. Their muscles ached and sores speckled their skin.
Stress and exhaustion frayed their nerves. Even worse, they were
(37:50):
low on food. The thin, erratic ice slowed their forward
progression to a crawl. By day forty, the two realized
they need to rastically increase their pace if they had
any hope of setting foot at the top of the world.
But since they couldn't ski any faster, they'd have to
go harder. They slept for just four hours at a
(38:11):
time and spent up to fifteen hours a day, attempting
to gain miles across the dicey landscape. Each step was
like playing Russian Roulette with the ice. On day fifty three,
Larsen and Waters finally reached the North Pole a mirror.
Forty two hours later, a small plane dropped from the
sky to scoop them up and ferry them back to civilization.
(38:34):
Within moments of liftoff, the limitless patchwork of ice and
water they had traversed vanished beneath the clouds. The dangerous
conditions they encountered reinforced the assumption at the last North
Expedition would be one of the final human powered trucks
to the Pole. Adventurers of the future who want to
follow in perides, plasteads, or even Larsen's footsteps are likely
(38:58):
out of luck. The sea ice that forms at the
pole each year rarely touches land, but that doesn't mean
the North Pole is out of reach. Today's adventurers, scientists,
and even tourists regularly visit the top of the world,
but their modes of travel are thoroughly modern. Most arrived
(39:19):
near the Pole by research ship or cruise vessel. After
a few hours, they returned to the ship. The price
for this momentary contact runs about thirty dollars a pop.
The recent Mosaic expeditions sought to recreate Frit Jeff Nonsen's
famous voyage in the From which we talked about in
our third episode, to study polar ocean currents. Nonsen purposefully
(39:42):
got his small ships stuck into polar ice and let
the currents take it where they may. The international team
of scientists on the Mosaic expedition did the same thing
with their modern icebreaker Polar Stern. The vessel remained ice
bound while the researchers made scientific observations of climate change
and compared their data to nonsense from the eight nineties.
(40:05):
Nonson eventually realized the currents wouldn't take the from to
the Pole, so he attempted to get there by dogs lad.
In contrast, in August, the Polar Stern sailed easily to
the North Pole amid slushy flows, not the solid ice
fields of yesteryear. A series of aerial photographs taken on
(40:26):
the day the ship reached ninety degrees north shows the
surface of the Arctic Ocean as well a mosaic of thin,
patchy ice, streams of slush, and blue water. Climate scientists
are fond of saying what happens in the Arctic doesn't
stay in the Arctic. It's easy to think of the
Arctic or the North Pole as a place that's not
(40:49):
only geographically distant, but someplace far away from modern civilization.
That's how Europeans in the early nineteenth century were able
to romanticize the Arctic. They projected their hopes and dreams
upon what they considered a blank slate, those empty spaces
on the map. The polar regions appeared pure, sublime and tantalizing,
(41:12):
something to be celebrated in poetry and tamed by technology.
But today we know that isn't the whole picture. Explorers
went ever farther into uncharted territory. They observed the people,
the animals, the climate. They mapped coastlines, islands, and waterways,
(41:32):
and as they studied and learned more about the Arctic,
they realized it was not as remote as they had thought.
I believe we're still learning this lesson. The actions that
we take today have a direct effect on the Arctic,
and those effects will reverberate back to us. Here's Kristin
(41:53):
Lydra I mean, what happens in the Arctic influences the
whole world. The fresh water that melts off of for example,
the England ice cap plays a big role in ocean circulation,
and that circulation is linked to major currents that basically,
you know, control our our climate system throughout the globe.
Something like the Greenland ice cap is kind of an
(42:13):
important reservoir of frozen fresh water, and as that melts,
you know a lot of things you hear about our
sea level rise and so increasing warming and the Arctic
accelerates melt of that ice cap and will affect coastlines
around the world. Those are just two simplified examples of
how connected we are to the Arctic, no matter where
we live or whether we'll ever go there. I became
(42:37):
interested in Arctic history because of my familial connection to it.
Reading about explorers and their expeditions was how I came
to understand some of the perils that region is facing now.
My hope is that by listening to the daring adventures
and complex personalities of the past, we all learn to
care more about the present and future Arctic. Caring about
(43:00):
something is the first step towards protecting it and we
need to include everyone in that story. An inescapable fact
of polar exploration is that it was conducted mainly by Westerners,
who were mainly white and mainly men. Many explorers left
a harmful legacy among the native communities they encountered and
(43:22):
places they went. Because of that, people who aren't in
this privileged group might feel like the story of exploration
isn't theirs or has no relevance to their lives. But
climate change in the Arctic affects everyone, and only collectively
can we try to stop it. We must tell stories
that are more inclusive and about why the Arctics, past, present,
(43:46):
and future is important, so everyone is engaged in protecting
the natural heritage of our planet. The quest for the
North Pole is more than the people who tried to
reach it or succeeded in conquering it. It's a doorway
through which we can examine our own history and human nature.
It's a symbol for the human desire for knowledge and
(44:07):
the struggle to understand ourselves. It reveals our shortcomings and
urges us towards action. Whether we learn from the past
and take action now is the choice we face. The
(44:40):
quest for the North Pole is hosted by Me Cat Long.
This episode was researched by Me and Carrie Wolf and
written by Carry Wolf, with fact checking by Austin Thompson.
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. The
supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. The show is edited by
Dylan fa Again. Thanks to our experts Andrea Pitzer, p J. Cappellotti,
(45:05):
Susan Kaplan, and Kristen Lydra for transcripts, a glossary, and
to learn more about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot
com slash podcast. The Quest for the North Pole is
a production of I heart Radio and Mental Flaws. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
(45:27):
podcasts m M. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
(46:03):
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
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