The Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage is a 900 mile Arctic sailing route that spans from Baffin Island in eastern Canada west to to the Alaskan coast. The dream of a fast commercial sea route connecting Europe and Asia [2] has been alive in the minds of explorers and rulers alike since the 2nd Century, but it wasn't until the 1400s that explorers started to make attempts to find and cross this hypothetical passage [1].
Many explorers tried and failed to cross the Northwest Passage, with the first successful crossing by boat in 1906 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Since Amundsen's achievement, the Northwest Passage has become a globally used commercial sea route, just as those original explorers had hoped to find [1].
Anthropogenic climate change has greatly impacted the Northwest Passage since the time of our 19th century explorers. Before 2000, the route was greatly blocked by ice, making it functionally impassable for ships [2]. However, climate change has increased the amount of sea-ice melting and reduced the sea-ice extent of areas including Arctic Canada. As a result, the Northwest Passage has had multiple ice-free summers [2]. While this is beneficial for commercial shipping and tourism to the North, it has dire effects for the ecosystems of the North and the Indigenous communities that live there.
Sources:
[1] History.com Editors. (2021, March 3). Northwest Passage. HISTORY. https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/northwest-passage
[2] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2023, May 11). Northwest Passage. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Northwest-Passage-trade-route