Plan For A Warmer Arctic

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31730, 13 July 1968, Page 13

Plan For A Warmer Arctic

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) OTTAWA, July 9. Russian scientists have produced engineering designs of a dam across Bering Strait which by regulating ocean flow would warm up the Arctic basin, Canadian experts say. Such a dam—some 50 miles across—would allow pumping of cold Arctic water into the Pacific, permitting warmer Atlantic water to flow across the Arctic basin. These Russian proposals are contained in an article by a scientist, P. M. Borisov, in the Soviet publication “Priroda,” which has been translated by E. R. Hope, of

Canada’s Defence Research Board. Borisov says it would take only three years to warm up the Arctic basin with Atlantic water to the extent that Arctic sea-ice would disappear. Temperatures in polar latitudes would rise 30 to 35 degrees. Permanent frost would vanish, tundra would be transformed into cattle-raising regions, dry steppes would reappear in present-day deserts —including the Sahara —and Canadian winters would be warmer. But the level of the world’s oceans would rise only some 4in in 50 years. Borisov’s article describes designs for a Bering Strait dam. The barrier would be built in pontoon sections, each some 250 yd long. The sections would be prefabricated in Pacific coast ship-

yards, and floated to the assembly point. They would be anchored with piles or by drilling. The top of the dam would be tilted to permit ice floes to ride up on it, and spill off on the southern side. Borisov gives no estimate of the cost of such a mammoth project. But he says many countries of the world, particularly Canada, the United States and Russia, would have to co-operate to bring it about. Borisov says the project would return the earth to its climatic condition of 4000 to 6000 years ago, when the Arctic basin was ice-free all the year round. Cooling began about 4000 years ago, and has lasted to the present day. The Russian plan would overcome the great difficulty posed by current flows. The Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, the most powerful warm cur-

rent in the world, pours into the Arctic basin through the Greenland Sea. But it runs straight into the outpouring Arctic Ocean. The Arctic, at its very entrance, thus becomes a dead end for the warm Atlantic waters.

The Russian plan would make the Arctic a transit basin. Water would be pumped out of the Arctic at Bering Strait, allowing the warm Atlantic current to flow into the Arctic basin. This warmer water would liquidate the ice in three years, and create more cloud, which in turn would increase rainfall and raise northern temperatures. The transfer of Arctic water into the Pacific would cool the latter ocean. But a special study had shown that the maximum cooling would be no worse than the heaviest cold spells of the last 30 years.