Arctic journey highlights effects of global warming

The Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica is docked before setting sail for the Bering Strait in British Columbia, Canada. The giant vessel is about to take a team of international researchers through the Northwest Passage to record the environmental and social changes transforming this remarkable, forbidding corner of the planet.

Shards of broken sea ice shine brightly under the Arctic sun as the ship sails through the Franklin Strait on the Northwest Passage. Sea ice forms when the top layer of water reaches freezing point, usually in October. Should the ice survive the following year’s summer melt and beyond, it becomes the toughest kind.

A cargo ship is framed distantly on the horizon from the deck of the MSV Nordica in the North Pacific Ocean. It’s one of the first sightings of marine traffic the Finnish icebreaker has encountered since it left Vancouver to traverse what is one of the most isolated maritime routes in the world.

The MSV Nordica sails past ice floating on the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska as it continues its journey through the Arctic's Northwest Passage. The record-breaking trip remains a challenge for conventional ships but scientists predict the route will be ice free by 2050, if current levels of warming continue.

Waves crash against the hull of the MSV Nordica as it heads towards the Bering Sea under a gray sky. For most of its 24-day journey through the Northwest Passage, the only companions the ship and her crew had were Arctic sea birds, seals and the odd whale. Late on in the journey, a crew member sighted a polar bear.

Boatswain Henri Helminen secures a rope as the MSV Nordica docks in Nuuk, Greenland, having traversed the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The 10,000 kilometer (6,214 miles) journey is the earliest transit of the Passage, breaking the record set by a Canadian Coast Guard ship in summer 2008.