Warmer Future

It is high time, in the opinion of Greenland-born Dr. Svend Frederiksen of Washington's Arctic Institute, that the world take account of its changing climate. For 50 years or more, says Dr. Frederiksen (who likes to describe himself as one of the world's two practicing Eskimologists*), the climate of the Arctic has been warming up, making agriculture possible where it has not been practiced in modern times. Southern Greenlanders are raising cattle and sheep as the Viking colonists did a thousand years ago--before their colony was destroyed, probably by increasing cold. Oats can be grown in Iceland and cabbages near Fort George on James Bay. The timber line is steadily creeping northward across the Canadian tundra.

The Arctic seas are warming, too. Eskimos of Greenland have had to abandon sealhunting; the seals have moved farther north. Instead, the Eskimos are fishing for cod, which have moved in from the south. Even north of Siberia the water is growing warmer; the Russians are having less trouble with ice on their far-northern sea route.

Dr. Frederiksen believes that warmth and cold in the Arctic come in cycles of about 1,800 years. Before the last peak of cold, from which the Arctic is just emerging, Greenland was really green, and the sea between Greenland and Iceland was sufficiently free of ice to permit the tiny ships of the Vikings to sail without disaster. Dr. Frederiksen predicts that this condition will return, and that great areas of Siberia, Canada and Alaska, now almost uninhabitable, will be opened to agriculture. Population will move north, and the world's balance of power may be affected.

Less welcome will be another effect: as the cold recedes the southerly regions will turn increasingly warm. Dr. Frederiksen believes that the gradual shift of climate will make the southern part of the U.S. hotter and drier than it is now. Farmers will have to pump more water on their fields, and in many places water may be less plentiful.

The change of climate is slow and undramatic, but Dr. Frederiksen thinks that it is none too soon for governments to plan for the warmer future. The change will affect the economy of nations, the health of their people and the politics of the world. "Already," he says, "we are deep in the warming-up period."

* The other: Professor (of Eskimology) Erik Hultved at the University of Copenhagen.

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