Do icebreaker ships breaking through ice contribute to ice melt, and changes in the ecology (i.e. make life harder for polar bears) given they are constantly smashing through ice that would otherwise remain intact?
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The ice-breaking itself has almost no impact.
First, note that these ships only break sea ice – that is, ice that is floating in the water. When floating ice melts, this does not add any additional water volume to the ocean. So as far as melting ice goes, only meltwater from land ice contributes to sea level rise. So, even if breaking through ice causes it to melt a little faster, that has no effect on sea levels. Also, the amount of ice broken by these ships is really minimal. They’re not trying to break up entire ice sheets – they’re just clearing a path. So even if they do cause a bit of extra ice melt, it will be a tiny drop in a very large bucket.
Ecologically, the impact is also generally minimal, again because the amount of ice they break is negligible compared to the total area of ice sheets. Taking polar bears as an example, they are good swimmers and will have no trouble getting across a canal cleared by an ice breaker. What threatens polar bears is the overall area of ice sheets shrinking significantly (as ice sheets are their hunting grounds) – not a few narrow gaps opening up occasionally.
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