According to a report from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (October 6, 2009) “Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 11.2 percent per decade, relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.”
David Barber, director of the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba, has been studying Arctic ice for more than 25 years. Dr. Barber has come up with similar figures in his research.
Melting Ice Causes Rising Sea Levels
Changes in the Arctic will have far-reaching effects in parts of the world where the traditionally frozen north is given little thought. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explains, melting ice (glaciers and other land-based sheets) also means rising sea levels. That could force hundreds of millions of people in low-lying, largely poor nations, from their homes.
The Science Editor of The Guardian, Robin McKie, reported (March 8, 2009) that, “Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives, and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding.”
In 2007, the IPCC warned that sea level could rise between 20 centimetres to 60 centimetres by 2100. The estimates were based on run off from such features as Himalayan glaciers and thermal expansion of ocean water as its temperature rises.
“But,” writes McKie “the report contained an important caveat: that its sea-level rise estimate contained very little input from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.”
Asia will be Hard Hit by Sea Level Rise
The five nations with the largest total population living in endangered coastal areas are all in Asia: China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
Between 1994 and 2004, about one-third of the world’s 1,562 flood disasters occurred in Asia; half of the total 120,000 people killed by floods were living in that region, the IPCC study said. In addition, more than 200,000 people were killed by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.
Ice Shelf Breaks Free
There's no doubt now that some dramatic changes are taking place. On August 13, 2005, a massive ice shelf collapsed into the sea off the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole.
According to National Geographic News (December 29, 2006) the force created when the mass of ice broke away - estimated to be the size of 11,000 football fields, or 66 square kilometres – “registered as a small earthquake on instruments stationed 150 miles (250 kilometres) away.”
In November 2006, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, released its new State of the Arctic report. According to the study, warming continues in the Arctic with a drop in the amount of sea ice, an increase in shrubs growing on the tundra, and rising concerns about the Greenland ice sheet.
Arctic Ponds Disappearing
Another clear sign of global warming in the Arctic is the discovery that Arctic ponds on Ellesmere Island are drying up.
Professor John Smol of Queen’s University and Marianne Douglas, a University of Alberta earth and atmospheric sciences professor, have been studying these ponds for 24 years.
On July 3, 2007 Queen’s News Centre carried a story about the work of the two scientists. “In a controversial 1994 paper published in the journal Science, they showed that the ponds existed for millennia, but that, beginning in the 19th century, they underwent marked ecological changes, consistent with warming.”
At the time, the science community thought Smols and Douglas were wrong. “Now there is almost universal scientific consensus concerning our 1994 conclusions,” Dr. Douglas told the Queen’s News Centre.
Professor Smols has likened the ponds to the miner’s canary: “Typically what happens in the Arctic is an early warning of what’s going to be happening in other places soon. What happens there affects us all.”
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
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