Ice melt means spike in CG Arctic operations

Coast Guard Cutter Healy is seen in thin ice in the Artic Circle.


Ice melt means spike in CG Arctic operations
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Feb 25, 2008 6:29:04 EST

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.”


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/02/coastguard_240208_arctic/