On Aug. 12, Kathy Young led 69 Arctic hydrologists, oceanographers and observers聽from every circumpolar nation on an expedition to Baffin Island. As chief delegate of the , the Arctic hydrologist and 91亚色 geography professor had been planning this seven-day conference聽on 's Lyubov Orlova for two years. In this second of two instalments聽about the expedition, 91亚色 communications officer Martha Tancock and professional photographer document excursions to spectacular Pangnirtung Fiord, a聽wilderness park, and an island teeming with thick-billed murres and prowled by聽belligerent polar bears.

Day 4 鈥� Fiords and flowers
Saturday, Aug. 15

Jason鈥檚 wake-up brought good news: The Lyubov Orlova was proceeding up Pangnirtung Fiord (above) on schedule, we were 20 miles below the Arctic Circle, the sky was clear and sunny, and聽the temperature was 11掳C聽 鈥� ideal for a hike near Auyuittuq National Park.

Steep rocky mountain slopes delivered surprises as we cruised up聽the spectacular and ancient Pangnirtung Fiord 鈥� patches of purple Arctic fireweed, a frothy waterfall, a solitary cabin at its foot. Snowcapped mountains patched with glaciers glistened under an intense blue sky in the distance.

We divided into three groups: the fast walkers, who sprinted as far and as high as they could behind restless adventurer Benoit Savard then tore back down to shore, where some stripped to their underwear and leapt like Finns out of a sauna into the frigid fiord; the hikers, who strode behind ornithologist and 91亚色 grad Elizabeth Gow (BSc Hons. 鈥�07, MSc 鈥�09) into the middle distance; and the 鈥減lant鈥� walkers like me who poked around the meadow close to shore with Arctic botanist Susan Aiken (left). (Photo by Martha Tancock.)

What riches she revealed. She鈥檇 never seen a grass meadow in the Arctic before, only sedge meadows. Here she identified silky Arctic sweetgrass, which doesn鈥檛 have a scent like its sister in the south. Except for the spiky aromatic Labrador tea, which was everywhere, Arctic flowers don鈥檛 waste their precious energy on producing scents. At our feet, in spongy hummocks and around rock outcrops, we found and tasted mushrooms, crowberries and blueberries. Our guide yelped when she spotted vistortia, a sort of Arctic peanut. She showed us how Inuit women roll wicks from cotton grass and use heather for bedding. We saw caribou scat and lemming holes, raven feathers and a finch-like pippet. When some of us ventured further up the slope 鈥� keeping within eyesight of rifle-bearing sentinels 鈥� she warned us to watch out for polar bears that sometimes sleep in the cool crannies between hills. This sedgey place, though, is more home to caribou and muskoxen.

Instead of the promised wilderness picnic, we enjoyed a barbecue on deck, warmed by the聽noonday sun.

Evening documentaries about Arctic and Antarctic expeditions topped an afternoon of papers on modelling hydrological variables and climate change. Research scientists and 鈥渆xplorers鈥� Glen Liston and Mathew Sturm and two others marked International Polar Year (IPY) by snowmobiling 4,200 kilometres across Arctic Canada. For seven weeks in March and April, they followed rivers and crossed barrens and lakes to place themselves 鈥渟quarely and firmly in the nexuses that changed the Arctic.鈥� That included retracing part of 19th-century British explorer John Franklin鈥檚 ill-fated first expedition to chart the north coast of Canada.

Left: An iceberg close to Monumental Island

The second film documented Liston and other American and Norwegian scientists on an IPY overland scientific expedition to the South Pole in 2007-2008. Along the way, Liston drilled 90 feet to get 2,000-year-old ice core samples. He was also the one who descended into a hut buried deep in the snow, unvisited since the Russians left it, chairs neatly stacked on tables, in the 1960s.

Day 5 鈥� A monumental challenge and a Monumental polar bear
Sunday, Aug. 16

Scientists sounded a collective alarm today. There is no doubt that climate change is wreaking havoc in the Arctic, but without more data and better modelling they cannot make accurate predictions or provide a big picture of the impact. The evidence is clear. As climate warms, Yukon rivers freeze later, river ice breaks up earlier and there are more ice jams. In Alaska, sparse data makes it difficult to predict the impact of increasing drought and fires on water supply needs, fish passage and聽tundra travel. Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures聽are thawing permafrost and causing landslides and soil collapse, but current data can only give a local, not a regional, picture.

Above: Thick-billed murres circle high over the cliffs of Akpatok Island

Keynote speaker Larry Hinzman, director of the International Arctic聽Research Center聽in Fairbanks, Alaska, underscored their message at the end of the day. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got some huge challenges,鈥� he said. If we are to predict the environmental impact responsibly, he said, we have to start viewing the Arctic as a system and not focus solely on our own special areas. Work has already begun on developing a circumpolar modelling system that could be ready in 10 years.

Left: From left, geography Professor Kathy Young聽with two 91亚色聽graduate students, PhD candidate Anna Abnizova (centre), who helped organize the conference,聽and master's candidate Jane Assini (right), who acted as a conference observer

We expected to see a colony of walruses on an excursion to Monumental Island in the Davis Strait today. Not a sign of them and聽we soon discovered why. A polar bear was swimming along the shore, disguised as a whitecap. We pulled up close and fell silent as it climbed ashore, stopping to sniff the air above and gaze in our direction then stepping nimbly over uneven rocky shelves. It was a male, according to naturalist Elizabeth Gow, because the urine stains were under its belly, not down its back legs.

Homeward bound we skirted an iceberg and got close enough to touch. On this聽excursion, two groups lifted bergy bits found later in Hudson Hurricanes, the cocktail of the day, concocted by bar manager聽Canina Clifford (BA Hons. '07, MA '08).

Day 6 鈥� Task forces and titans
Monday, Aug. 17

We鈥檙e in luck. A calm sea and sunny weather make a trip possible to Akpatok Island in Ungava Bay. Akpa is Inuktitut for murre and there are millions nesting on the narrow ledges of the chiselled cliffs.

Right: Victor and vanquished on Akpatok Island

After final morning workshops where delegates proposed task forces on snow, precipitation and ungauged basins, conference business ended. By 1:30pm we were zooming toward the tan-coloured cliff walls shrouded in thick layers of white cloud 鈥� perfect camouflage, we discovered, for polar bears. But within minutes, we saw a mother and pup napping on the shore, then a male snacking on fallen eggs. As we motored further along the shore, a massive male ambled towards us, its front paws stained with blood. We rounded the point to see a fallen male with a deep gash on its forearm. We had just missed a clash of titans. We pitied the vanquished even more when Gow predicted his certain death. On the way back, we saw the victor cleaning his paws.

That evening, as the Lyubov Orlova chugged towards Kuujjuaq, Nunavik,聽our final destination, we dressed up for the captain鈥檚 dinner and toasted Kathy Young many times over for a job well done.

Above: Sunrise over Hudson Strait

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to give the group a tour of the Eastern Arctic while hosting its biennial conference. 91亚色 communications officer Martha Tancock and professional photographer

Day 1 鈥� Arrival in Iqaluit
Wednesday, Aug. 12

Montreal was so hot and humid the morning of our departure, that it was hard to imagine that in less than three hours, First Air would jet us into overcast, misty weather almost 20 degrees cooler. As the First Air jet lifted off from Trudeau Airport and climbed to 31,000 feet, we left聽behind a suburban landscape dotted with turquoise pools and flew up the middle of Quebec following sandy oxbow rivers into a聽roadless, lake-studded green and grey expanse of Canadian Shield.

Not long after sampling Arctic char, we landed in Iqaluit, 鈥減lace of many fish鈥� and capital of Nunavut. The modular airport tower was a beacon of orange against a grey sky. Two school buses took us to the local museum where Earle Baddaloo, Nunavut鈥檚 assistant deputy minister of environment, welcomed us and urged us to taste muskox burgers and visit the 鈥渧ery striking and very northern鈥� Legislative Assembly, which we did. Top of his mind was the European Union鈥檚 decision to ban seal. The people of Nunavut 鈥渁re not going to sit back and sulk鈥� but will search for alternative markets, he insisted. Also greeting us was Mary Ellen Thomas, executive director of the Nunavut聽Research Institute, which supports 150 social, natural and health science research projects in the north.

After CBC North interviewed 91亚色 geography Professor Kathy Young about the conference, we toured Nunavut's Legislative Assembly, an airy igloo-shaped chamber built of British Columbia pine and decorated聽with Inuit prints, weaving and carvings, including a mace fashioned from a narwhal tusk. Our tour guide was Sean茅 d鈥橝rgencourt (right), the first page from Nunavut to serve in Canada鈥檚 House of Commons.

The bumpy ride to the harbour took us past the聽dump, stacks of crushed cars and mounds of used tires 颅鈥� a sight common to聽communities perched on impenetrable permafrost. At the water, we pulled on raincoats for our first聽spurt聽in inflated rubber Zodiacs to the waiting Lyubov Orlova. The ship is named after the Marilyn Monroe of the early Russian screen. Lyubov is Russian for 鈥渓ove鈥� so we were sailing on the love boat聽out of聽Frobisher Bay.

Day 2 鈥� Icebergs
Thursday, Aug. 13

At 7:05am, the voice of Cruise North expedition leader Jason crackled across public announcement speakers in each cabin. He listed longitude and latitude coordinates, temperature and weather conditions. Breakfast would be served at 7:30. To port, he added, you will see icebergs. Sure enough, through my porthole I spotted a compact blue-veined berg, then another. Many of us clamoured聽on deck for a better view.

Conference delegates gathered for a packed agenda of聽presentations in the forward lounge.聽Mid-morning, while they聽heard about聽snow modelling and the challenges involved in measuring snow cover, depth and density, I聽visited the ship's bridge.聽Here taciturn Russian naval officers monitored radar, compasses and other wayfinding instruments to navigate safely through treacherous northern waters.聽After a while, one聽pointed over the bow. 鈥淚zeboorg,鈥� he said. Through聽impenetrable fog, a faint grey horizontal line slowly emerged, then聽defining edges and finally聽the entire聽monster. Despite being the size of Toronto's downtown core, it moved with聽enough speed to create a headwind that blew the snow off its saddleback.

Stealthy and fast, it was easy to imagine how it could take a captain by surprise in the middle of the north Atlantic at night.聽In fact, one delegate聽guessed it had calved from the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, the same one that spawned the iceberg that sunk the Titanic.

Meanwhile, the conference turned its focus on聽the effect of聽earlier ice breakups and later freeze-ups on Arctic lakes and rivers. The day was capped with聽a keynote talk by Robie Macdonald, research scientist at Fisheries聽& Oceans Canada's Institute of Ocean Sciences. Internationally recognized for his work on contaminant transport in oceans, he contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore. Macdonald was invited to this conference to share an oceanographer鈥檚 perspective 鈥� a major goal of the conference 鈥� of what happens when freshwater聽runoff from land and melting sea ice聽interact with聽currents in the Pacific, Arctic聽and Atlantic oceans. Will the Arctic Sea become a seasonably open ocean?聽Yes.聽By 2013? He's not sure.聽(Read more in his International Polar Year聽.)

Day 3聽鈥� Bones to see and to pick
Friday, Aug. 14

In the Arctic we must be flexible, say our Cruise North hosts. An unexpected detour overnight meant the 5am trek to the Kekerten Island whaling station would be postponed to 11am. Without missing a beat, hydrologists and oceanographers gave scheduled talks on the rapid rate of sea-ice shrinkage, tracing the route of fresh meltwater from Greenland into the north Atlantic and changes in ice cover in the Baltic Sea.

At 10:30am, we donned rain gear and rubber boots, packed hiking boots and cameras, for an excursion to Kekerten, an abandoned whaling station. Before we could land, guides armed with rifles scouted the area for polar bears. All clear, we scurried ashore and followed聽boardwalks to historical plaques and skeletal remains of all sorts 鈥� a building, rusty vats, a whale鈥檚 giant skull and 100-year-old human bones scattered around聽their weathered wooden coffins. Off the beaten path, we bounced like moonwalkers across spongy tundra 鈥� a blanket of green moss, white and yellow lichen, and fluffy, white cotton grass聽鈥� and climbed craggy rocks coated in聽the black tripe de roche lichen that ill-fated 19th-century British explorer John Franklin's starving men ate and crawling with聽the witchy fingers of Arctic willow, to get a better view of a calm, misty Cumberland Sound.聽聽

Later, we visited Pangnirtung for a meeting between scientists and village elders, an anticipated highlight of the trip. In June 2008, the village declared a state of emergency after a flash flood knocked out two bridges and carved a channel through permafrost down to the bedrock. Through a translator, nine elders talked about this and other local signs of climate change聽鈥� glaciers disappearing in Cumberland Sound, high tides, moss washing into the sea. Scientists said permafrost is melting, glaciers are shrinking, sea ice is disappearing, water levels are rising, winds are changing and rivers are flooding around the circumpolar North. Both elders and scientists聽shared the opinion that聽we must all adapt to climate change.

Back on board Lyubov Orlova, the crew briefed us about the next day鈥檚 excursion聽鈥� a hike to Auyuittuq National Park in the stunning Pangnirtung Fiord (right). Read about it in YFile's聽next issue.

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For six days in mid-August aboard the Lyubov Orlova (right), a renovated Russian passenger ship operated by Inuit-owned Cruise North, leading Arctic hydrologists, oceanographers and climatologists from every circumpolar nation will share their latest research with each other 鈥� and with northern communities聽鈥� as participants in the . In four packed days, they will聽deliver 50 papers, addressing the theme of managing hydrological uncertainty in high-latitude environments, a reference to聽the challenge of understanding聽the impact of global warming on聽Arctic water systems.

鈥淚t is the first time terrestrial hydrologists and oceanographers have officially come together for the purpose of sharing what they know,鈥� says Young, the first woman to organize this biannual conference of the in 34 years.

The idea for such an exchange arose at the NRB鈥檚 16th conference in northern Russia two years ago. Hydrologists, who study inland water systems, were curious to know the effect of diminishing sea ice on water loss into the atmosphere and as runoff into rivers, lakes and oceans.

Left: Kathy Young

Rising temperatures and melting sea ice have聽brought more fog, rain, snow聽and extreme weather in the North. When the rain coincides with spring snowmelt, as it did in Pangnirtung, Nunavut,聽last year, flash floods occur, ripping through permafrost and hurling sediment into coastal waters. In polar oceans, disappearing sea ice and more open water have resulted in聽storm surges聽that blow further inland and聽are battering places like the聽Mackenzie River Delta.

A highlight of the trip will be a public meeting between scientists and residents of Pangnirtung who want to find out more about the flash flood that whacked the village last year. In minutes, it tore out two bridges, leaving half the village stranded and without power, and carved a channel through permafrost right down to the bedrock. The volume of water overwhelmed the sewage plant which overflowed and contaminated the pristine Pangnirtung Fiord, home to beluga and narwhal whales.

Right: Pangnirtung declared a state of emergency after a flash flood tore out bridges in June 2008 Photo from iglootalk.com.

Both climate change and increased human activity in Arctic regions have made estimating water budgets, water chemistry and hydrological modelling difficult, leading to uncertainty for scientists, policy-makers, water managers and northern residents, says Young.

鈥淣orthern water systems have been poorly quantified and sparsely observed,鈥� she says. 鈥淚f we want to estimate future changes in our northern basins with more certainty, we need to keep improving our data-collection processes and modelling strategies.鈥�

She has scheduled the delivery of 50 papers over an intense four days on a range of topics, including predicting precipitation, ocean interactions and modelling climate change. Some are very topical, and others have clear real-world applications, as papers on:

• the need to monitor runoff from the rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet;
• the economic implications of later freezing and earlier break up of ice on northern lakes;
• and the importance of estimating runoff correctly before you design stream crossings for oil and gas lines.

There are two keynote speakers. Robie Macdonald (right), a renowned Arctic oceanographer with the federal Institute of Ocean Sciences, will talk about what happens when freshwater rivers and streams meet the polar salt sea.聽Larry Hinzman, an Arctic hydrologist and director of Alaska鈥檚 International Arctic Research Center, will discuss the need to understand atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic processes and their effects on the global climate.

Young raised $150,000 in kind and in cash from government, research agencies, corporate sponsors and private family foundations for this symposium, $40,000 of which came from Environment Canada鈥檚 Water & Climate Impacts Research Centre.

With those dollars, Young has made sure scientists from every circumpolar nation 鈥� Russia, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark (Greenland), the United States and Canada 鈥� can participate.

They sail next Wednesday from Iqaluit, Nunavut,聽up the east coast of Baffin Island to Pangnirtung and end their journey at Kuujjuak, Nunavik,聽Aug. 18. Along the way, they will meet Inuit elders and regional politicians, visit Auyuittuq National Park and an abandoned whaling station at Kekerten, Nunavuk, and watch for walruses, polar bears and Arctic birds.

Right: Walruses at Monumental Island. Photo courtesy of Cruise North.

Young has corralled veteran scientists who have spent their entire careers observing the Arctic to present at the conference, including:

• Terry Prowse, an Arctic hydrologist at the Water & Climate Impacts Research Centre in British Columbia, who will talk about the ecological and economic implications of rapid changes when freshwater ice freezes and breaks up on northern lakes:
• Ming-ko Woo, an Arctic hydrologist at McMaster University, who calls for more collaborative research on the mutual influences of polar seas and northern hydrology;
• Oddbj酶rn Bruland, a snow hydrologist at Norway鈥檚 Statkraft Energy, one of the largest hydropower producers in Europe, who will describe ENKI, a hydrological forecasting system of snowcover and snowmelt runoff, crucial to estimating future power-generating capacity;
• Douglas Kane, an Arctic hydrologist at Alaska鈥檚 Water & Environmental Research Center, who stresses the need to know more about runoff in ungauged northern basins before proceeding with the design of stream crossings necessary for oil and gas development;
• and Bent Hasholt, a glaciologist at Copenhagen鈥檚 Institute of Geography & Geology, who will emphasize the need to monitor meltwater, erosion and sediment transport flowing to the sea from different parts of the fast-melting Greenland Ice Sheet.

Young is also presenting a paper suggesting that, as yet, no clear trend in long-term climatic signals can be established聽at Polar Bear Pass, a Bathurst Island wildlife sanctuary in the High Arctic she has been studying.

Also attending the conference as observers are two 91亚色 graduate students in geography, PhD candidate Anna Abnizova (left), who helped organize the conference, and master鈥檚 candidate Jane Assini (right).

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer

Republished courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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