Researchers take poles' temperature

NF Reporter · 02-26-2007, 03:53 PM

AP - More than 50,000 scientists from 63 nations turned their attention to the world's poles Monday to measure the effects of climate change, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines to study everything from the effect of solar radiation on the polar atmosphere to the exotic marine life swimming beneath the Antarctic ice.

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waltky · 02-15-2008, 09:45 PM

Sharks gonna be munchin' on baby penguins??...

Warming threat to Antarctic life
Friday, 15 February 2008, Sharks will migrate into Antarctic waters if warming continues, threatening marine animals, scientists warn.

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Unique marine life in Antarctica will be at risk from an invasion of sharks, crabs and other predators if global warming continues, scientists warn. Crabs are poised to return to the Antarctic shallows, threatening creatures such as giant sea spiders and floppy ribbon worms, says a UK-US team.

Some have evolved without predators for tens of millions of years. Bony fish and sharks would move in if waters warm further, threatening species with extinction, they say. In the last 50 years, sea surface temperatures around Antarctica have risen by 1 to 2C, which is more than twice the global average.

Loss of species

Speaking in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the researchers said global warming could fundamentally change the ecosystem, leading to the loss of some species.

Antarctic sea life has developed a delicate equilibrium " The water only needs to remain above freezing year round for it to become habitable to some sharks, and at the rate we're going, that could happen this century "
Prof Cheryl Wilga

More BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Warming risks Antarctic sea life

bizwiz · 02-15-2008, 09:55 PM

Global warming certainly does it's damage. It's amazing how much a couple of degrees affects the ecosystem and the subsequent life it supports.

waltky · 10-31-2008, 01:43 AM

Human activity responsible for polar warming...

Polar warming 'caused by humans'
Thursday, 30 October 2008 - The rise in temperatures at Earth's poles has for the first time been attributed directly to human activities, a study says.

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The work, by an international team, is published in Nature Geoscience journal. In 2007, the UN's climate change body presented strong scientific evidence the rise in average global temperature is mostly due to human activities. This contradicted ideas that it was not a result of natural processes such as an increase in the Sun's intensity. At the time, there was not sufficient evidence to say this for sure about the Arctic and Antarctic. "We really can't claim anymore that it's natural variations that are driving these very large changes" - Peter Stott, Met Office

Now that gap in research has been plugged, according to scientists who carried out a detailed analysis of temperature variations at both poles. Their study indicates that humans have indeed contributed to warming in both regions. Researchers expected this result for the Arctic - because of the recent sharp increase in the melting of sea ice in the summer in the region - but temperature variations in the Antarctic have until now been harder to interpret. Today's study, according to the researchers, suggests for the first time that there's a discernable human influence on both the Arctic and Antarctica.

Best fit

The research team took the temperature changes over the polar regions of the Earth and compared them with two sets of climate models. One set assumed that there had been no human influence the other set assumed there had. The best fit was with models that assumed that human activities including the burning of fossil fuels and depletion of ozone had played a part.

According to one of the researchers involved with the study, Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, formally showing that the Antarctic was being influenced by human activities was the key development "In the recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report for example," he said, "it wasn't possible to make a statement about the Antarctic because such a study had not been done at that point. "But nevertheless when you do that you see a clear human fingerprint in the observed data. We really can't claim anymore that it's natural variations that are driving these very large changes that we are seeing in our in the climate system."

Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said: "Our study is certainly closing a couple of gaps in the last IPCC report. "But I still think that a number of people, including some politicians, are reluctant to accept the evidence or to do anything about it until we specifically come down to saying that one particular event was caused by humans like a serious flood somewhere or even a heatwave. "Until we get down to smaller scale events in both time and space I still think there will be people doubting the evidence."

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Polar warming 'caused by humans'