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Thirteen days, 3,000 kilometers, sub-zero temperatures.

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Adventurer Bear Grylls is on an expedition through the Northwest Passage

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to witness one of the most worrying changes ever seen by climate scientists.

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A four-meter-thick blanket of ice that once enveloped Canada's Arctic water channels

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now melts away each summer beneath the sun's increasing heat.

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Many of us can see the evidence in photographs from space,

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but few of us have the courage or the skill to take a close-up look.

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Bear is a man well-equipped to take on such a challenge.

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My job filming, you know, the Man vs. Wilds and the Born Survivors,

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I go to the extremes and I see the reality of what global warming is doing and it's an ugly fate.

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You know, you get a big reduction of ice up there that has big effects on the tropics,

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and you suddenly hear about big floods in Bangalore or whatever.

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All of this...our planet is very interconnected,

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and the goal of the trip is to show the reality of what is happening up there.

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This sea link between the Atlantic and the Pacific has attracted generations of explorers,

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many of whom where defeated by the ice like the British expedition of 1845.

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By 2007, so much sea ice had melted that the route became navigable for the first time in history.

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Not as much ice, but just as much danger.

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The explorers of old had to break up the sheets; the adventurers of today have to dodge floating blocks.

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We're just trying to pick our route through.

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It's kinda like a maze, a game of checkers, trying to find a route through all of this sea ice.

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Ninety-nine percent of the year all of this is just solid ice.

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At the moment, there's a lot less sea ice [compared to what there was] before, and that is down to global warming.

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The ice of the Arctic acts as a giant reflector.

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As this girdle melts, newly exposed sea water soaks up the sun's heat creating warmer oceans that melt more ice.

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This process is taking place so rapidly that scientists fear all sea ice during the summer months could vanish by 2030. 

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We're going to places that, you know...parts of the Arctic that nobody would have ever been before.

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So, all of this water is just uncharted.

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The only route ships have ever gone is the other side of this island, the traditional route down the Northwest Passage.

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But what's exciting for us in a little boat is we can explore areas that nobody has ever been able to explore before,

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but this is what it's all about!

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Uncharted Arctic waters contain the essence of adventure, but they are also proof of a forever changed world.

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Disappearing sea ice may open up new trade routes and offer new thrills,

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but it will also destroy coastlines and reclaim land.

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Melted water, like Bear Grylls, can't stand still. It has to find somewhere to go.