Signs of warming continue in the Arctic

NF Reporter · 11-17-2006, 02:09 AM

AP - Signs of warming continue in the Arctic with a decline in sea ice, an increase in shrubs growing on the tundra and rising concerns about the Greenland ice sheet.

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08-01-2007, 02:55 AM

Sen. Boxer goes to check it out...

Greenland Trip Stokes Boxer's Global Warming Fire
July 31, 2007 - A fact-finding trip to Greenland has renewed Sen. Barbara Boxer's desire to pass legislation aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, according to the senator who has been promising such legislation since early in her term as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

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Boxer, a California Democrat, took nine members of her committee to Greenland July 27-29 to tour glaciers, ice shelves and fishing villages in the arctic nation which is home to 10 percent of the planet's ice. "It's one thing to hear about the Greenland ice sheet; it's another thing to see it," she told a news conference Monday. "It's one thing to read about the impacts of global warming on the native people there; it's another thing to have them look you in the eye and tell you."

Boxer said icebergs "are heading to the Atlantic Ocean at a speed twice as fast as in 1985; melting at a rate that will lead to sea-level rises with disastrous consequences unless we act to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide that have already caused the temperature in Greenland to rise four degrees since 1988." She said increased temperatures are driving polar bears into villages where they are killed because they pose a risk to humans. She also said fishermen in the region are being forced to adapt to changes in fish habits as a result of the warming.

Boxer said the trip reminded her that "I have a responsibility to move now to lessen the impacts of severe global warming." Several bills have been drafted that would address carbon emissions through cap-and-trade systems. Boxer has promised since April that she will move legislation through her committee as soon as a bill exists that could pass the narrowly divided Senate. Most recently, she pledged to use the momentum created by former Vice President Al Gore's Live Earth concerts to push for action on climate change.

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waltky · 08-16-2007, 08:33 PM

Bye-bye Florida...

Greenland Ice Cap melt would inundate world's coast
Thursday 16th August, 2007 The meltdown of the Greenland ice cap within the next 300 years will raise global sea levels by 22 feet, enough to inundate most of the world's coastal regions, according to a new study by a researcher from the University East Anglia, England.

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It was previously thought that a total meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet would occur at least 1,000 years later. However, Dr Tim Lenton believes the risks are far greater. He says the world is close to being committed to a collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, although he doesn't believe a tipping point has yet been reached.

A remnant of the last Ice Age, Greenland's ice cap is nearly two miles high, but if the climate change crisis were to reach the point of no return and the ice sheet were to melt, then global sea levels would rise by 22 feet and swallow up most of the world's coastal regions. Dr Lenton's group at the University East Anglia also identified eight other environmental tipping points that could occur this century. These include a collapse of the thermohaline circulation, which is the name given to a global system of ocean currents.

Besides shutting down the Gulf Stream, this could also switch off the Asian monsoon and warm the Southern Ocean, perhaps destabilising the West Antarctica ice sheet. Also, global warming could cause a near-permanent El Nino in the Pacific, which would also hasten runaway fires in the Amazon rainforest and its disappearance by the middle of the century.

Greenland Ice Cap melt would inundate world\'s coast

waltky · 09-10-2007, 12:22 AM

Can't say we aren't being warned...

In Greenland as Icebergs Raise Sea Levels
Sept. 9, 2007 - Greenland: Where Towering Icebergs Raise Sea Levels; Scientists, Tourists Visit Glacier Threatened by Global Warming

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The Jakobshavn glacier and ice fjord at Ilulissat, jammed with towering icebergs, are breathtaking to see, but scientists report they are now pouring out some 20 million tons of frozen water into the ocean every day. It is helping to raise sea levels at a rate scientists say could devastate the homes and properties of hundreds of millions of people on the world's coastlines by mid-century.

As climate experts become more and more familiar here, some Greenlanders also hope that global warming will bring them a lot more tourists. It's clearly beginning to, and one local tour guide and shop owner overflows with stories about global warming:

"I never seen, like now, the last six, seven years, the bay doesn't frozen no more. No more ice," Silverio Scivoli, owner of Tourist Nature, told us over a cup of hot tea in the back of his shop. He showed us satellite photos depicting the long retreat of the Jakobshavn glacier, which has been pulling back since the industrial revolution accelerated the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. "In 1850, the glacier was here. Now, we are down here," Scivoli said. Now, the glacier is melting even faster. It has retreated nine miles in only the last five years.

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waltky · 10-16-2008, 10:46 PM

Avg. 1st frost here is Oct. 15, yesterday it was 85 degrees...

Report: Arctic temperatures at record highs
WASHINGTON — Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported Thursday.

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"Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter" to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card. The report, compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, looks at a variety of conditions in the Arctic. The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere.

"Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions," said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. "It's a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways." For example, autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 9 degrees above normal. The report noted that 2007 was the warmest year on record the Arctic, leading to a record loss of sea ice. This year's sea ice melt was second only to 2007.

Rising temperatures help melt the ice, which in turn allows more solar heating of the ocean. That warming of the air and ocean affects land and marine life, and reduces the amount of winter sea ice that lasts into the following summer. The study also noted a warming trend on Arctic land and increase in greenness as shrubs move north into areas that were formerly permafrost. While the warming continues, the rate in this century is less than in the 1990s due to natural variability, the researchers said.

In addition to global warming there are natural cycles of warming and cooling, and a warm cycle in the 1990s added to the temperature rise. Now with a cooler cycles in some areas the rise in temperatures has slowed, but Overland said he expects that it will speed up again when the next natural warming cycle comes around. Asked if an increase in radiation from the sun was having an effect on the Earth's climate, Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus, Ohio, said while it's important, increased solar output only accounts for about 10% of global warming. "You can't use solar to say that greenhouse gases are not a major factor," Overland added.

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