2022年8月31日

耐力:我们如何保护极地地区?

6分钟读

Melting polar icecaps are opening up shipping lanes and making resource extraction increasingly viable, but they’re also giving rise to urgent new global environmental and geopolitical issues that the world must solve. 零压力 podcast host Helen Sharman speaks to Professor Klaus Dodds to find out what can be done.

“冰对地球的未来是不可或缺的,克劳斯·多德教授说, 皇家霍洛威大学生命科学与环境学院执行院长, and the first guest in series two of the 零压力 podcast from Imperial College London and Saab.

多兹教授, 地缘政治专家，特别关注极地地区的国际治理, 告诉节目主持人, 英国第一位宇航员海伦·沙曼博士, about the ability of ice to reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere and cool the Earth (‘the Albedo Effect’). But he also explains how shrinking ice levels through global warming have created a “multiscalar issue” for our planet. 例如, shrinking ice levels create problems on multiple levels; local, 在全国范围内, 区域性的，甚至全球性的.

我们需要量化气候变化的影响, 在国际上工作, with actors across multiple scales of governance and the private sector to find ways to live more sustainably, 为了避免无节制的全球变暖带来的灾难性后果.

We also learn that the current status of efforts to protect the North and South Poles from the effects of global heating are complicated by today’s troubled geopolitical climate, which is leading to a growing competition for resources and jockeying for position among several nations. 比如俄罗斯, 美国, UK, 加拿大, 挪威, 中国和印度都在寻求在北极地区的战略影响力和自然资产.

“The collateral damage to our relationship with Russia that’s come from the invasion of Ukraine is diminishing the opportunities for early-career scientists to work with their Russian counterparts on important scientific collaborations,多兹教授说.

相反，俄罗斯正转向东方，投靠印度和中国等国. 我们将会看到更多这样的“北极科学外交”, with the danger that between North America and Europe versus Russia and the Asian Arctic our study of the region becomes disaggregated, 由于地缘政治的原因分裂成两部分.”

“但,他补充道, “我们必须把北极作为一个综合体来研究, 这个区域本身就与更广阔的地球纠缠在一起, 所以把它们分开的想法是完全没有意义的.”

可在您喜爱的频道收看:

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我们可以使用哪些技术?它们如何提供帮助?

“当我们谈论地缘政治和气候变化时，人们忘记了这一点, technology is absolutely integral to what we do in the here and now and what we might do in the future,多兹教授说. “寒冷对科技创新起到了刺激作用.”

对于北极和南极来说，技术上的挑战包括地图不完整, 极其不完整的通讯覆盖, 当然, 严重破坏性天气. 不过, 全球定位系统(GPS), 互联网和社交媒体在高北部地区变得越来越普遍, while drones are being used by shipping operators to help them gain real-time intelligence about sea ice and weather conditions. 两极的卫星覆盖范围也在改善, 哪一个是加强以民用为基础的科学和理解气候变化所不可或缺的.

海伦还包括了另一位专家的简短贡献, 肖恩澳洲, 北约总部在国防和投资方面的海上领先地位. Trevethan recently told Dr Sharman and the Royal Geographical Society’s Great Exhibition Road festival about advances in autonomous underwater drone vehicles (AUVs), whose Inertial Navigation System uses quantum sensor technology to ‘feel’ its path as it moves. 因此，AUV可以测量它的方向, 使它非常适合在偏远地区执行更长时间的任务, 即使考虑到海流.

Saab has recently had its own success with AUVs when two of its Sabertooth vehicles helped find Ernest Shackleton’s long-lost ship Endurance off the coast of the Antarctic. 但是，地缘政治在这项技术的极地应用方面再次显现出来.

“在基础设施项目方面，水下无人机技术改变了游戏规则, 但这也让人们越来越意识到, 因为北冰洋的海洋环境越来越繁忙, 这些技术还将有助于监视和领域感知,多兹教授说.

And geopolitics also intersects with other technologies that aim to improve Arctic communications, 包括低空卫星网络, 比如埃隆·马斯克的星链, 以及北冰洋的海底通信电缆. The recent mysterious sabotage of the subsea cable from Svalbard to mainland 挪威 shows that competition is obscuring our ability to carry out research for the greater good. 正如多兹教授所说, “科学现在面临着比科学家们希望的更加政治化的棘手局面.”

科学的曙光

Yet 多兹教授 also sees hopeful signs for science in the potential of renewable polar energy, 特别是风力发电的发展, 在高北和北极地区的水力发电和地热发电. The Svalbard seed vault and the siting of Facebook’s server farm in northern Sweden are other examples of how polar-based technology can be used to benefit us.

然而, he is most excited about the continuing findings on climate change that come from ice core research, 早在20世纪50年代，格陵兰岛就开创了这项技术. Ice core research studies regional climate variability and compares and differentiates that variability from global climate signals.

“It’s a continuation of the work on how far one can one go back in time through an extracted ice core,他说.

不管发生什么事, both 多兹教授 and Helen are clear that polar issues are only going to become more important for our planet in the years ahead, so the development of new technologies that can both help to preserve polar resources and find sustainable ways to work with them are only going to become more vital in time to come.