| Arctic ice cap could melt by 2070, Russia warns |
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| Tuesday, 01 July 2008 | |||||||||
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 The North Affairs Committee of Russia's Upper House of Parliament has prepared a report which outlines a bleak future for the Arctic. Committee member Yury Vorobyov has told the Interfax news agency that the thickness of ice in the Arctic Ocean has nearly halved in the past 30 years. Overall, he says the ice cover has shrunk by almost a third in the past century. Mr Vorobyov has warned that ongoing melting could disrupt the traditional lifestyle of northern indigenous people as large areas flood, and some animal species including polar bears will become extinct. He says these dangers have to be taken into account by the Russian Government in its policies for the region. Source: ABC News
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Adam
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this story is basically posted 10 times on the website this week... |
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Nicke
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October 4, 2007 A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice. Son Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters. "The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said. |
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