Latest Climate of the Arctic Stories
By David FogartyMONTREAL -- On the surface, polar bears and coral atolls don't have much in common but when it comes to global warming they have plenty to link them.Rising seas and more frequent and severe storms are threatening the livelihoods of indigenous groups in the Arctic and small tropical island states, forcing some communities to relocate while driving up business costs and threatening tourism."These are the two most vulnerable regions to climate change," said Sheila...
By Timothy Gardner NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Arctic ice shelf has melted for the fourth straight year to its smallest area in a century, driven by rising temperatures that appear linked to a buildup of greenhouse gases, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday. Scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which have monitored the ice via satellites since 1978, say the total Arctic ice in 2005 will cover the smallest area since they started measuring. It is the least amount of...
New satellite records monitored by a national team of collaborators show a four-year pattern of extremely low summer sea-ice coverage in the Arctic that continued in September 2005, which may be the result of warming temperatures and earlier spring melting. Since 2002, the satellite data have revealed unusually early springtime melting in areas north of Siberia and Alaska. In 2005, the trend expanded to include the entire Arctic ice pack, said Ted Scambos of CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice...
WASHINGTON -- Warming in the Arctic is stimulating the growth of vegetation and could affect the delicate energy balance there, causing an additional climate warming of several degrees over the next few decades. A new study indicates that as the number of dark-colored shrubs in the otherwise stark Arctic tundra rises, the amount of solar energy absorbed could increase winter heating by up to 70 percent. The research will be published 7 September in the first issue of the Journal of...
The current warming trends in the Arctic may shove the Arctic system into a seasonally ice-free state not seen for more than one million years, according to a new report. The melting is accelerating, and a team of researchers were unable to identify any natural processes that might slow the de-icing of the Arctic. Such substantial additional melting of Arctic glaciers and ice sheets will raise sea level worldwide, flooding the coastal areas where many of the world's people live. Melting sea...
RENO, Nev. (AP) -- A Reno scientist is among a team of researchers who will spend the next several weeks studying the icy Arctic Ocean to document historic climate changes. Glenn Berger, a research professor at the Desert Research Institute, and others set off Friday aboard the Healy, a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. "There are more climate changes happening up there than anywhere else in the world," Berger said of the Arctic. "Models predict drastic changes up there by the...
