Welcome to Orange County Alaska

[Guest guest]

Fast Arctic thaw is a sign of global warming, says report

 

 

 

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

By Alister Doyle, Reuters

 

 

 

OSLO — Global warming is hitting the Arctic more than twice as fast

as the rest of the planet in what may be a portent of wider,

catastrophic changes, the chairman of an eight-nation study said

Monday.

 

Inuit hunters are falling more frequently through the thinning ice,

and habitats for plants and animals are also disrupted. The icy

Hudson Bay in Canada could be uninhabitable for polar bears within

just 20 years.

 

The melting is also destabilizing buildings on permafrost and

threatening an oil pipeline laid across Alaska.

 

Benefits for human commerce might accrue from the opening up of a

now largely icebound short-cut sea route from the Pacific to the

Atlantic. Russia might also win easier access to oil and gas as the

icecap shrinks and permafrost retreats.

 

However, the broader consequences are disturbing.

 

"There is dramatic climate change happening in the Arctic right

now ... about 2-3 times the pace of the whole globe," said Robert

Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), an

1,800-page report to be handed to ministers in Iceland in

November. "If you want to know what the rest of the planet is going

to see in next generation, watch out for the Arctic in the next 5-10

years," he said.

 

The report combines input from scientists, indigenous peoples, and

eight Arctic rim nations.

 

The Arctic reacts most to global warming, blamed largely on

emissions of gases like carbon dioxide from fossil fuels in cars and

factories, partly because dark-colored water or earth, once exposed,

soaks up heat far faster than white ice or snow.

 

Some parts of Alaska have heated up 10 times more than the global

average, said Corell, a senior fellow at the American Meteorological

Society. Future temperature rises in the Arctic were likely to be

twice the 1.4-5.8 Celsius (3-11 F) gain by 2100 forecast by a U.N.-

led panel of scientists, he said.

 

Kyoto?

 

"I think it (climate change) can be stopped but we will need an

aggressive response," Corell said.

 

Global climate change may bring everything from disastrous floods or

droughts to a rise in global sea levels that could swamp low-lying

Pacific islands. But environmentalists doubt that governments will

decide strong action based on the ACIA report because the United

States has pulled out of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the main

international scheme to tackle climate change.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he favored

ratifying Kyoto, which has already been backed by the other six

Arctic rim nations: Canada, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and

Denmark.

 

"The (ACIA) report underlines how critical it is that we take action

as soon as possible, first under Kyoto, to reduce emissions and

invest in renewable energy," said Samantha Smith, director of the

Arctic Program at the WWF environmental group.

 

Among signs of change in the Nordic region, birch trees were taking

over traditional reindeer lichen pastures, Corell said. The reindeer

had to compete with elk and red deer moving north.

 

Corell said that the sea route between the Pacific and the Atlantic

via the Arctic could open far earlier than expected by most previous

studies, cutting shipping times compared to routes via the Suez or

Panama canals.

 

"On average our models show that by 2050 the Northern Sea Route will

be open about 100 days a year. Now it's open about 20 days," he said.

 

 

 

 

Source: Reuters