• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Fragile Labrador Sea Ice Arrives Five Weeks Late, 85% Thinner

March 29, 2021
Reading time: 3 minutes

Natalie Lucier/Wikimedia Commons

Natalie Lucier/Wikimedia Commons

 

The sea ice was five weeks late to arrive along the north coast of Labrador this year—and is still 85% shy of its typical thickness. The Inuit communities that rely on that ice are rallying as best they can under conditions that pose both immediate dangers and long-term peril. 

Fierce rainstorms and the warmest temperatures on record in January were a “climate curveball” thrown at the village of Makkovik early this year, writes CBC News. Temperatures in January averaged 10°C above normal.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

And now, when the sea ice along the coast should be at its thickest (about one metre), at a mere 15 centimetres it is a fragile fraction of its healthy norms. 

“The late and meagre ice this year has been the talk of Makkovik and the four other communities that comprise Nunatsiavut, the self-governing territory of Labrador’s Inuit—along with the Innu village of Natuashish, which lies on the north coast between Nain and Hopedale,” writes CBC.

The state of the sea ice is on everyone’s lips because essential activities like hunting and firewood collecting cannot happen if the ice is too thin to bear the weight of a snowmobile. Sea ice roads are also the only reliable connection between communities once ferries stop running in the fall, as air travel is frequently grounded by weather. 

“The ice is our highway, and when that gets disrupted, so does life on the north coast,” said Barry Andersen, head of Makkovik’s community government.

Restricted in their movements, hunters are coming back empty-handed, leaving families depending more and more on non-traditional, and often unhealthy, store-bought foods. 

The thinning ice is also a threat to a profound, and irreplaceable, spiritual connection. “It reminds you of who you are, where you came from,” said Charlotte Wolfrey, the community government head of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut’s most southern community. She told CBC the loss of the ice makes her fear for the future of her grandchildren. 

“All those good things that kept us healthy and well, and kept us who we are, and kept us grounded, are not going to be available, I don’t think, to our next generation,” she said.

Commenting on the current “really weird” ice season, Robert Way, a Queen’s University geographer who specializes in climate change in Labrador, told CBC the winter’s anomalies may well become typical by 2050.

In a recent study for Environment Canada study, Way found that Nunatsiavut now regularly sees “almost 40 fewer days of snow on the ground” than it did in the late 1950s, and that the region’s northernmost parts are losing sea ice more rapidly than anywhere else in the Canadian Arctic. 

The people of Nunatsiavut are trying valiantly to adapt to their melting world with efforts like the SmartICE (Sea-ice Monitoring and Real-Time Information for Coastal Environments) initiative, which combines high-tech data sensors and radar satellites with Indigenous knowledge about weather and ice conditions to help locals map safe routes across the ice. 

But the ultimate fate of Labrador lies in the hands of world leaders far away. “If things don’t go well with mitigation, then things might be not heading in a good direction,” Way said.

Even if the world manages the necessary heavy lifting on the mitigation front, communities like Makkovik will nonetheless face profound, and devastating, change. Citing a United Nations study from March 2019, CBC writes that the Arctic is “locked into a three-to-five-degree warming scenario regardless of any mitigation measures for global greenhouse gas emissions.” 

Continue Reading



in Arctic & Antarctica, Canada, Climate & Society, Climate Impacts & Adaptation, First Peoples, Food Security & Agriculture, Health & Safety, Ice Loss & Sea Level Rise, Jurisdictions

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Mike Mozart/Flickr
Ending Emissions

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
322
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures
Canada

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE
Ending Emissions

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
322
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196

Recent Posts

CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
121
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
341
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
313
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
323
Next Post
waferboard/Wikimedia Commons

Water Contamination Nets Record Fine for Teck Mine as Conservationist Questions Long-Term Impacts

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}