|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
ptarmigan
Joined: 01 Mar 2007
|
 Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 7:19 am Post subject: Arctic sea ice area continues to shrink |
 |
|
Arctic sea ice narrowly missed record low
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/ap_alaska/story/8767967p-8669518c.html
| Quote: |
By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer
(Published: April 5, 2007)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Arctic sea ice this winter just missed setting the record for fewest square miles covered since monitoring by satellite began, according to University of Colorado researchers.
The university's National Snow and Ice Data Center has measured ocean waters covered by at least 15 percent ice since 1979.
On March 31, the last day of the ice-growing season for 2007, ice covered 5.7 million square miles. That's slightly higher that the record low 5.6 million square miles measured last year.
"This year's wintertime low extent is another milestone in a strong downward trend," said researcher Walt Meier. "We're still seeing near-record lows (in sea ice) and higher-than-normal temperatures, and we expect this downward trend to continue in future years."
He also suggested that predictions of sea ice decline expected Friday from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be conservative. Actual measurements are showing a steeper decline in the amount of sea ice that what models used by the panel predicted.
"It appears that the models are not capturing something that's going on," Meier said.
Declining sea ice has been blamed on higher winter temperatures in the Arctic, a result of rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and strong natural variability in the ice, Meier said.
Researchers track sea ice using satellite data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as data from Canadian satellites and weather observatories.
The annual sea ice minimum is measured in September. As winter begins in the north and temperatures drop, more sea ice is formed and the edge of the ice pack moves south.
The sea ice maximum is measured in March. As temperatures warm, the edge of the ice pack moves north. Off Alaska, the ice pack retreats completely out of the Bering Sea, through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean.
In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, a typical March measurement or Arctic sea ice would show it covering 6.4 million square miles, Meier said. That's been reduced in recent years by at least 600,000 square miles, an area more than double the size of Texas.
Sea ice is a key component in the habitat of northern marine mammals.
The loss of sea ice has fueled the call in the United States for actions to protect polar bears, which depend on the sea ice platform to hunt their main prey, ringed seals. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, acting on a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity, will decide by January whether polar bears should be listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.
Females walruses off Alaska use the edge of the retreating sea ice in summer like a conveyor belt, moving north to different feeding areas as the ice moves, leaving their young on the ice platform as they dive to the bottom to feed on clams and other invertebrates. In recent years, including late summer 2004, the edge of the ice sheet moved north beyond the relatively shallow continental shelf to water too deep for walrus cows to dive.
The study noted regional differences in the amount of sea ice. For example, the amount of ice off Alaska in the eastern Bering Sea last month was higher than normal, Meier said. Ice in the Bering Sea is dynamic and highly dependent on wind, appearing farther south if northern winds dominate, he said.
Measurements indicate there was less ice than normal last month in the Barents Sea, off the northern coast of Norway, off Greenland and in the Canadian Atlantic.
Overall, the trend since 1979 shows sea ice decline throughout the Arctic at all longitudes.
"To see that, there really isn't another good explanation for that to happen other than warming air temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
The IPCC uses 20 climate models for predictions of sea ice trends, Meier said.
"All the models show a downward trend," he said.
IPCC models show the Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summers by 2070.
"Our data suggests it could easily happen by 2050 if current trends continue," Meier said. |
Any questions? |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 8:16 am Post subject: |
|
|
I keep telling people this is all going faster than they like to think. People dismiss the comments stating that the ice melt for Greenland and Antarctica weren't even included in the sea level rise projections of the IPCC report a couple months ago, for example. They also like to dismiss the statements by some participants that the report is not strong enough and has been too diluted. Or even the simple fact that the science lags behind actual natural changes by years.
It ain't gonna be pretty. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 1:43 am Post subject: |
|
|
As I've been saying for years its all going to go very quickly indeed once it starts.
But nobody listened to my warnings. I said the earths climate was very finally balanced, like a spoon balancing on the rim of a glass. You keep adding a grain of salt, again, again, again and nothing happens. Finally you add 1 grain to many and the whole thing collapses.
I'm telling you now. You have about until 2012.
The point of no return was crossed about a year and 6 months ago- when carbon levels that had been relatively stable, suddenly jumped off the scale. The feedback loop has begun, the dominos are falling.
There is no stopping hugely destructive climate change now.
The age of mass refugees, increased warfare, a loss of about a 3rd of the worlds freshwater reserves. A collapse of the food chain.
Enjoy the last few years of life on planet earth. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
madcap
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Gangneung, Korea
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 2:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
This article is great. It almost made me laugh. We already made money by causing global warming, now we can make more because of it.
| Quote: |
Climate Change Condition of Ice Cap Leads to New Turf Conflicts
HAMMERFEST, Norway - Barren and uninhabited, Hans Island is very hard to find on a map. Yet these days the Frisbee-shaped rock in the Arctic is much in demand - so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships.
The reason: an international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by the effect of global warming on Earth's frozen north.
The latest report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the ice cap is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly because of greenhouse gases. It's a catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for Inuit populations whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters.
But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the Arctic sector approaching $2 trillion.
All this has pushed governments and businesses into a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly priceless seas.
Regardless of climate change, oil and gas exploration in the Arctic is moving full speed ahead. State-controlled Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA plans to start tapping gas from its offshore Snoehvit field in December, the first in the Barents Sea. It uses advanced equipment on the ocean floor, remote-controlled from the Norwegian oil boom town of Hammerfest through a 90-mile undersea cable.
Alan Murray, an analyst with the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, said most petroleum companies are now focusing research and exploration on the far north. Russia is developing the vast Shkotman natural gas field off its Arctic coast, and Norwegians hope their advanced technology will find a place there.
"Oil will bring a big geopolitical focus. It is a driving force in the Arctic," said Arvid Jensen, a consultant in Hammerfest who advises companies that hope to hitch their economic wagons to the northern rush.
It could open the North Pole region to easy navigation for five months a year, according to the latest Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, an intergovernmental group. That could cut sailing time from Germany to Alaska by 60 percent, going through Russia's Arctic instead of the Panama Canal.
Or the Northwest Passage could open through the channels of Canada's Arctic islands and shorten the voyage from Europe to the Far East. And that's where Hans Island, at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, starts to matter.
The half-square-mile rock, just one-seventh the size of New York's Central Park, is wedged between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Danish-ruled Greenland, and for more than 20 years has been a subject of unusually bitter exchanges between the two NATO allies.
In 1984, Denmark's minister for Greenland affairs, Tom Hoeyem, caused a stir when he flew in on a chartered helicopter, raised a Danish flag on the island, buried a bottle of brandy at the base of the flagpole and left a note saying: "Welcome to the Danish island."
The dispute erupted again two years ago when Canadian Defense Minister Bill Graham set foot on the rock while Canadian troops hoisted the Maple Leaf flag.
Denmark sent a letter of protest to Ottawa, while Canadians and Danes took out competing Google ads, each proclaiming sovereignty over the rock 680 miles south of the North Pole.
Some Canadians even called for a boycott of Danish pastries.
Shortcuts through Arctic waters are no longer the stuff of science fiction.
In August 2005, the Akademik Fyodorov of Russia was the first ship to reach the North Pole without icebreaker help. The Norwegian shipyard Aker Yards is building innovative vessels that sail forward in clear waters, and then turn around to plow with their sterns through heavier ice.
Global warming is also bringing an unexpected bonus to American transportation company OmniTrax Inc., which a decade ago bought the small underutilized Northwest Passage port of Churchill, Manitoba, for a token fee of 10 Canadian dollars (about $ .
The company, which is private, won't say how much money it is making in Churchill, but it was estimated to have moved more than 500,000 tons of grain through the port in 2007.
Just a few years ago, reports said it would take 100 years for the ice to melt, but recent studies say it could happen in 10-15 years, and the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway have been rushing to stake their claims in the Arctic.
Norway and Russia have issues in the Barents Sea; the United States and Russia in Beaufort Sea; the United States and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage; and even Alaska and Canada's Yukon province over their offshore boundary.
Canada, Russia and Denmark are seeking to claim waters all the way up to the North Pole, saying the seabed is part of their continental shelf under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Norway wants to extend its claims on the same basis, although not all the way to the pole.
Canada says the Northwest Passage is its territory, a claim the United States hotly disputes, insisting the waters are neutral. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to put military icebreakers in the frigid waters "to assert our sovereignty and take action to protect our territorial integrity."
Politics aside, there are environmental concerns. Apart from the risk of oil spills, more vessels could carry alien organisms into the Northwest Passage, posing a risk to indigenous life forms.
The Arctic melt has also been intensifying competition over dwindling fishing stocks.
Fish stocks essential to some regions appear to be moving to colder waters, and thus into another country's fishing grounds. Russian and Norwegian fisher s already report catching salmon much farther north than is normal.
"It is potentially very dramatic for fish stocks. They could move toward the North Pole, which would make sovereignty very unclear," said Dag Vongraven, an environmental expert at the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Russia contests Norway's claims to fish-rich waters around the Arctic Svalbard Islands , and has even sent warships there to underscore its discontent with the Norwegian Coast Guard boarding Russian trawlers there.
"Even though they say it is about fish, it is really about oil," said Jensen, the consultant in Hammerfest.
In 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the sovereignty issue "a serious, competitive battle" that "will unfold more and more fiercely."
With all the squabbling over ownership, Tristan Pearce, a research associate at the University of Guelph's Global Environmental Change Group in Canada, reminded Arctic nations of who got there first: indigenous peoples such as the Inuits and the Sami.
"Everybody is talking about the potential for minerals, diamonds, oil and gas, but we mustn't forget that people live there, all the way across the Arctic," he said. "They've always been there, and they have a major role to play."
(c) 2007 Virginian - Pilot. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Virginian - Pilot
|
[/i] |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 3:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| The half-square-mile rock, just one-seventh the size of New York's Central Park, is wedged between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Danish-ruled Greenland, and for more than 20 years has been a subject of unusually bitter exchanges between the two |
And I thought Dokdo was childish....  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
