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Credit Pacific Service Union Ice in the Arctic Ocean and on Greenland's massive icecap shrank to record levels this summer, providing more evidence that global warming is causing unprecedented environmental change that is alarming seasoned climate-watchers.

The melting of glaciers, ocean ice and ice shelves in the Arctic and Antarctic could be one of the clearest indicators of global warming.

Credit First Service Union "I was really surprised by this," said Mark Serreze, a polar researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who announced the findings Saturday at a meeting of scientists here. "This was the craziest summer I've seen up there."

It says global warming is heating up the Arctic at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet, threatening to send the polar bear to extinction and wipe out fisheries.It also says that melted polar ice could put millions of people in Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, and the U.S. states of Florida and Louisiana in danger.

Card Credit Mobile Service The news comes at a time when researchers are becoming increasingly concerned about abrupt climate change. In the geological past, rapid changes linked to global warming and the melting of polar ice have resulted in century-long droughts and sea level increases that could cripple many of today's low-lying cities.

Continued global warming could have many damaging effects on Earth. Weather patterns could change, causing flooding, drought, and an increase in damaging storms. Global warming could melt enough polar ice to raise the sea level. It might harm plants and animals that live in the sea. It could also force animals and plants on land to move to new habitats. In certain parts of the world, human disease could spread, and crop yields could decline.

Card Credit Discover Service "If we do nothing, warming in the next 150 years could be enough to melt the Greenland ice sheet, causing a 3- to 6-meter [about 10-foot to 20-foot] sea level rise that could be catastrophic," said Jonathan Overpeck, an expert on past climates at the University of Arizona.

Climate change means rising global temperatures and rising sea levels. Ice caps will melt and this will have a devastating effect on local climate conditions affecting forests, crop yields and water supplies.

Credit Public Service Union Arctic sea ice is at its minimum in September, at the end of the summer. At that time, ice normally covers 2.4 million square miles of ocean north of Greenland, Russia and Canada. This summer, ice covered just 2 million square miles and was extremely thin in many regions, said Ted Scambos of the Colorado data center. It's the lowest seen since scientists began closely monitoring the Arctic by satellite 24 years ago, Serreze said, and is probably a record for the last 50 years. Historical records kept by fishermen in Iceland are spotty, but suggest that Arctic sea ice has not been so low for centuries, he added.

Keep your beer ice cold with Metrokane's Polar Ice Glass. Fill the center tube of the polycarbonate glass with ice to keep beer or any other beverage ice cold without diluting it with melting ice.

Card Credit Processing Service The icecap on Greenland, the second-largest mass of frozen freshwater in the world after Antarctica, also broke all records for melting this summer. Satellites recorded melting across nearly 265,000 square miles of the icecap, which is about the size of Texas.

Center Credit Service Union Melting occurred even on the island's northernmost reaches and to elevations as high as 6,560 feet that are normally too cold to melt. There was so much flooding at the surface that glaciologist Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado had to be evacuated by helicopter in June. His camp was under more than a foot of water, said Steffen, who plans to start next year's field season a month early to avoid flooding.

Card Credit Service Wireless The 14,000-foot-thick Greenland icecap has thinned several feet per year in some areas, he said. This is not caused directly by the melting, but by water that seeps through crevasses to the bottom of the ice and then helps the ice flow more quickly to the sea, where it breaks off as icebergs that eventually melt.

Credit Security Service Union The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean and Greenland, coupled with other new work showing the rise of trees and shrubs across once-barren Arctic tundra lands, "presents a compelling case that something is changing very rapidly over a wide area," said Larry Hinzman, an expert in Arctic change at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Credit Report Service Oceanographers who study the region are seeing changes in the water beneath the ice as well. Salinity and temperature are starting to shift, suggesting that the ocean may be circulating differently, said James Morison, an oceanographer at the University of Washington's Polar Science Center.

Blogspot Com Christian Even subtle changes can dramatically effect the oceans' largest currents.

Christian Counseling Credit The most dramatic of these is a reversal of the Gulf Stream, which normally warms Europe by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit but stopped abruptly 11,000 years ago, leading to a mini Ice Age for the area.

Credit Federal Service Union Scientists here are trying to understand exactly what is causing these changes. Many studies suggest that greenhouse gases produced by industrial activity are to blame for about half of the roughly 2-degree warming of the planet seen in recent decades, and natural factors are blamed for the other half.

Credit Monitoring Service The Arctic sea ice is influenced dramatically by a decades-long cycle called the "Arctic oscillation," which varies between a phase that leaves much of the Arctic cold and still and one that leaves it warm and windy. Though the phases alternate normally every decade or so, the Arctic has stayed locked in the warm and windy phase since the 1980s, Serreze said.

Credit Division Service Serreze blames the warm stretch and its many storms for the lack of sea ice. But that doesn't mean that he pins the changes on Mother Nature alone.

Card Credit Online Service A growing body of research suggests that human pollutants, including ozone-destroying chemicals and greenhouse gases, are responsible for keeping the Arctic oscillation locked in the warmer mode, he said. Environmental groups and many foreign nations are criticizing U.S. leaders for not taking action to reduce the output of greenhouse gases.

Consumer Counseling Credit Inc President Bush convened a summit on global warming in Washington last week, but said that the issue needed to be researched further before any implementation of potentially costly rules.

Card Credit Fleet Service With Arctic ice so dramatically on the wane, many scientists here remained skeptical of that policy. "As a scientist, I certainly advocate continued research," Serreze said.

Card Consolidation Credit "But the longer we wait, the longer we procrastinate, and the bigger our problems will be in the future."

Credit Free Online Report By Usha Lee McFarling
Los Angeles Times - 12/8/2002

Topic: Climate Change

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