Photo Gallery The Changing Arctic World
Much of the wildlife in the Arctic depends on the ice for their survival. Polar bears, like this one swimming between ice blocks in the Arctic Ocean, have become the symbols of global warming.
The melting ice has resulted in a race for the resources that may lie beneath. Leaders of the countries bordering on the Arctic region met in May, 2008 for a summit to discuss the situation.
Among the biggest losers of global warming are Inuits, whose homeland is rapidly changing. In August 2008, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Inuit children in Inuvik.
Canada has begun paying more attention to its Arctic regions in an effort to boost its sovereignty there.
Canada has even sought to establish a military presence in the Arctic Ocean. Here, the icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent on patrol in Baffin Bay in July. On this trip, the ship was carrying scientists there to study climate change.
A member of the US Coast Guard looking out the back of a C-130 as he surveys Arctic ice off the northern coast of Alaska. The US is also taking a renewed interest in the Arctic region as the ice melts.
A glacier on the island of Spitzbergen. Nowhere are temperatures rising as quickly as they are in the Arctic.
Greenland is also seeing a rapid shrinkage of its gigantic ice layer. Here, the ice fjord near Ilulissat.
Climate researchers fear that a change in global weather patterns could mean that warming in the Arctic has dramatically accelerated and that a point-of-no-return has been reached.
In Greenland, some 20 percent of the island is now free of ice.
An aerial image of ice on Greenland taken in 2005. The light blue stripe shows melting water flowing through the ice.
Researchers have noticed that vegetation in Greenland has been changing and shifting as the ice melts and the climate warms up.
In Spitzbergen, a number of species have been inadvertently brought in and have taken root.
