GLOBAL WARMING NEWS |
Big Arctic Perils Seen in Warming, Survey FindsNew York Times: October 30, 2004 A comprehensive four-year study of warming in the Arctic shows that heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks around the world are contributing to profound environmental changes, including sharp retreats of glaciers and sea ice, thawing of permafrost and shifts in the weather, the oceans and the atmosphere. The study, commissioned by eight nations with Arctic territory, including the United States, says the changes are likely to harm native communities, wildlife and economic activity but also to offer some benefits, like longer growing seasons. The report is due to be released on Nov. 9, but portions were provided yesterday to The New York Times by European participants in the project. While Arctic warming has been going on for decades and has been studied before, this is the first thorough assessment of the causes and consequences of the trend. It was conducted by nearly 300 scientists, as well as elders from the native communities in the region, after representatives of the eight nations met in October 2000 in Barrow, Alaska, amid a growing sense of urgency about the effects of global warming on the Arctic. The findings support the broad but politically controversial scientific consensus that global warming is caused mainly by rising atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and that the Arctic is the first region to feel its effects. While the report is advisory and carries no legal weight, it is likely to increase pressure on the Bush administration, which has acknowledged a possible human role in global warming but says the science is still too murky to justify mandatory reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. The State Department, which has reviewed the report, declined to comment on it yesterday. The report says that "while some historical changes in climate have resulted from natural causes and variations, the strength of the trends and the patterns of change that have emerged in recent decades indicate that human influences, resulting primarily from increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, have now become the dominant factor." The Arctic "is now experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate change on Earth," the report says, adding, "Over the next 100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate, contributing to major physical, ecological, social and economic changes, many of which have already begun." Scientists have long expected the Arctic to warm more rapidly than other regions, partly because as snow and ice melt, the loss of bright reflective surfaces causes the exposed land and water to absorb more of the sun's energy. Also, warming tends to build more rapidly at the surface in the Arctic because colder air from the upper atmosphere does not mix with the surface air as readily as at lower latitudes, scientists say. The report says the effects of warming may be heightened by other factors, including overfishing, rising populations, rising levels of ultraviolet radiation from the depleted ozone layer (a condition at both poles). "The sum of these factors threatens to overwhelm the adaptive capacity of some Arctic populations and ecosystems," it says. Prompt efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions could slow the pace of change, allowing communities and wildlife to adapt, the report says. But it also stresses that further warming and melting are unavoidable, given the century-long buildup of the gases, mainly carbon dioxide. Several of the Europeans who provided parts of the report said they had done so because the Bush administration had delayed publication until after the presidential election, partly because of the political contentiousness of global warming. But Gunnar Palsson of Iceland, chairman of the Arctic Council, the international body that commissioned the study, said yesterday that there was "no truth to the contention that any of the member states of the Arctic Council pushed the release of the report back into November." Besides the United States, the members are Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden. Mr. Palsson said all the countries had agreed to delay the release, originally scheduled for September, because of conflicts with another international meeting in Iceland. The American scientist directing the assessment, Dr. Robert W. Corell, an oceanographer and senior fellow of the American Meteorological Society, said the timing was set during diplomatic discussions that did not involve the scientists. He said he could not yet comment on the specific findings, but noted that the signals from the Arctic have global significance. "The major message is that climate change is here and now in the Arctic," he said. The report is a profusely illustrated window on a region in remarkable flux, incorporating reams of scientific data as well as observations by elders from native communities around the Arctic Circle. The potential benefits of the changes include projected growth in marine fish stocks and improved prospects for agriculture and timber harvests in some regions, as well as expanded access to Arctic waters. But the list of potential harms is far longer. The retreat of sea ice, the report says, "is very likely to have devastating consequences for polar bears, ice-living seals and local people for whom these animals are a primary food source." Oil and gas deposits on land are likely to be harder to extract as tundra thaws, limiting the frozen season when drilling convoys can traverse the otherwise spongy ground, the report says. Alaska has already seen the "tundra travel" season on the North Slope shrink to 100 days from about 200 days a year in 1970. The report concludes that the consequences of the fast-paced Arctic warming will be global. In particular, the accelerated melting of Greenland's two-mile-high sheets of ice will cause sea levels to rise around the world. |
Global Warming Will Decimate Arctic PeoplesInter Press Service, September 11, 2004 BROOKLIN, Canada - Climate change will soon make the Arctic regions of the world nearly unrecognisable, dramatically disrupting traditional Inuit and other northern native peoples' way of life, according to a new report that has yet to be publicly released. The dire predictions are just some of the findings by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), an unprecedented four-year scientific investigation into the current and future impact of climate change in the region. "This assessment projects the end of the Inuit as a hunting culture," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the group that represents about 155,000 Inuit in the Arctic regions of Canada, Russia, Greenland, and the United States. The report predicts the depletion of summer sea ice, which will push marine mammals like polar bears, walrus and some seal species into extinction by the middle of this century, Watt-Cloutier told IPS. The assessment was commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental body involving the eight Arctic nations -- Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and the United States. The Inuit and other Arctic peoples also participate in the Council and contributed to the ACIA report, along with over 600 hundred scientists from around the world. Although complete, it will not be made public or presented to governments until after the U.S. presidential elections at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, Nov. 9-12. The impacts of climate change are already widely felt in the Arctic. Thawing permafrost -- the normally perpetually frozen layer of earth -- has collapsed roads and buildings. Unexpectedly thinner sea ice and small streams that have become raging rivers has led to several drownings in recent years, according to Watt-Cloutier. "Our traditional wisdom on how to survive and thrive on the land is becoming useless because everything is changing and changing fast." Alaska experienced its warmest and driest summer ever this year, Patricia Anderson of the ACIA Secretariat University of Alaska said in an interview. Temperatures soared 10 degrees C. above normal and millions of hectares of forest burned in the worst wildfires ever recorded, following several recent years with major fires. And now the state is facing infestations from the spruce budworm, a tree-eating insect that had only plagued southern forests previously. "It used to be too cold for it up here," Anderson noted. Unable to provide details on the report itself, Anderson confirmed that the report documents that these are not just unusual events but are in fact trends. "Sea ice will continue to get thinner, there will be much more melting of permafrost and more coastal erosion due to stronger storm surges." Inuit people will be unable to continue living off the land in the future and the changes are coming so fast they won't be able to adapt, she said. "These are the results of climate change." The Arctic is warming twice as fast as anywhere else because of global air circulation patterns and natural feedback loops such as less ice reflecting sunlight, leading to increased warming at ground level and more ice melt. Computer projections by the ACIA show that trend will continue with the Arctic warming by an average of 6 degrees C by the end of the century -- even if the Kyoto Protocol commitments to reducing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide go into effect on a global scale. And yet things could be even worse. Scientists deliberately selected moderate projections to avoid controversy, Anderson said. "The rest of the world needs to pay attention to what's happening in the Arctic because it's acting as an early warning barometer for what will happen in the rest of the world," said Watt-Cloutier. If that's not reason enough, another key finding in the ACIA report, Anderson said, is the concern that the melting of Arctic ice and snow will dump enough fresh water into the Arctic ocean to slow or shut down the vital North Atlantic Ocean conveyor current. This conveyor current brings warm tropical waters north and moderates temperatures in eastern North America and Europe. Large volumes of fresh water spilling out of the Arctic ocean could slow its northward movement, leading to an abrupt climate shift where the region would experience much cooler temperatures in just a few years time. Some scientists have detected signs that this may be already starting to happen. Despite the alarming evidence, there is little good news when it comes to taking action on climate change. Carbon dioxide emissions are climbing globally, including by the biggest contributor, the United States. "The Bush administration doesn't believe there's a problem and are behind the delay in the release of the report," said Gordon McBean, an ACIA participant from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at the University of Western Ontario. "They don't even think they ought to reduce their emissions, period." But to truly reduce the impact on the Arctic, global emissions have to be reduced by a whopping 50 percent before the year 2050, McBean told IPS. The Kyoto Protocol, which has not been ratified in the seven years since it was created because the United States and Russia, among others, will not support it, would reduce emissions a mere 5 percent by 2012. "Kyoto was just a first step, we need a strategy to get to a 50 percent reduction," McBean said. Even Canada, which strongly supports Kyoto and emissions reductions, has done little to reduce its own pollution, he said. Government inaction on climate change by Canada and the United States is due in large part to the failure of the general public to apply pressure on the issue, says Watt-Cloutier. "People don't seem to understand that what they do on a daily basis has a direct impact on the people and wildlife of the north," she said, adding that she hopes people will begin to see that their actions -- their choice of vehicle, for example -- can produce negative consequences for others and future generations. "People do want to do the right thing, but they just don't realise that the Arctic is melting and they are responsible," she said. © Copyright 2004 IPS - Inter Press Service
Radio Interview: Earth & Sky, October 30, 2004 Dr. Gunter Weller , Director, Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research ... Excerpts from an interview with Gunter Weller: -Can you give me a preview of some of the predictions you'll be making in the upcoming assessment? Well, the computer models show us areas where the warming will be greatest and they generally show that that will be the case in the central arctic. As the ice gets thinner, the feedback on the climate will accelerate. The projected increases in temperature in winter in the arctic are up to 9 degrees centigrade. That's almost 17 or 18 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's a pretty substantial increase. And the consequences of this might be that in summer there will be little or no ice in the central arctic. This has implications for transarctic shipping. And people are beginning to take that up as an interesting issue. If you want to ship goods between the West Coast of the U.S. or from Asia to Europe, it's considerably shorter to ship your stuff through the Arctic Ocean. So the whole idea of transarctic shipping is an economic incentive and as a positive, presumably positive, influence of climate change is being considered now and could change things considerably. With the disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, there is a danger that polar bears as a species may become extinct because they no longer have a suitable habitat. So these are some of the big changes that we foresee in the future. Also, the melting, the thawing, of permafrost in the interior in Alaska here and other permafrost areas will change not only man-made structures, infrastructure, but also ecosystems. As the ground begins to thaw, as trees begin to collapse in boreal forests, particularly if the ground is ice rich, ... the transformation from a boreal forest ecosystem into wetlands and eventually into grasslands is something that is also projected as a future impact. So you can see in the Arctic, we expect to see in the long term pretty dramatic transformations from one sort of ecosystem to another. And also pretty substantial economic impacts of one way or another. -Are any of these changes surprising to you? Well, I think the computer models with all their deficiencies pointing out these pretty dramatic changes, like the potential disappearance of the sea ice in the arctic ocean in summer was a bit of a surprise. It was always assumed that with the warming of the climate, there would be a reduction in the extent of ice. But that some of the models actually predict that there will be a complete disappearance. I think that's a complete surprise. Now of course, the models give different results depending on which model you use. But they're all pretty uniform in their opinion, in the projections that the ice extent will shrink considerably. So I would consider that one of the surprises. The other one is possibly the rapid spread of insects with a warmer climate, including the spruce bark beetles that have done such fantastic damage already in Alaska. And the possibility that also factors that affect the health of humans. West Nile, for example, is spreading at a pretty rapid rate through Canada at the moment and is expected to reach Alaska probably in the not too distant future that some of these vector borne diseases and health problems multiplying. I find that a bit -- the speed at which they're moving at the moment and are likely to expand in the future -- I find pretty surprising too. So there are surprises of this kind. The following person was interviewed for today's show. Our thanks to: Gunter Weller |