EARTH WATCH

STUDY: ARCTIC ICE WILL BE GONE BY END OF THE CENTURY
REPORT: RECORD ARCTIC ICE MELTING
NATIONAL PARK'S FAMOUS GLACIERS DISAPPEARING--QUICKLY
EARTH WEEK: WARMING MIGRATIONS
SCIENTISTS LINK POLLUTION, DROUGHT
OZONE HOLE CLOSING
SCIENTISTS: HUMANS AT HEART OF WARMING
GLOBE WARMS; BUSH FIDDLES

STUDY: ARCTIC ICE WILL BE GONE BY END OF THE CENTURY
(By Alanna Mitchell for the Toronto Globe and Mail)

     The vast expanse of permanent ice that has characterized the Arctic Ocean for millennia is fated to disappear far faster than anyone imagined and will certainly be gone before the century is out, says a NASA satellite study.
     The startling survey shows that an area of ancient ice roughly as large as Texas is vanishing every decade as the climate warms.
     Over the course of this survey, which ran from 1978 to 2000, about 12 million square kilometers of supposedly permanent ice melted away.
     And the rate of the melt--roughly 9 percent a decade--is speeding up, said physicist Josefino Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and author of the study.
     "This year we had the least amount of permanent ice cover ever observed," Comiso said.
     His findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters have caused a stir because they show that the permanent ice cover is melting at roughly three times the rate scientists had thought. If the melt keeps up at this rate, the permanent ice cover at the top of the Earth will be gone before the end of this century.
     But Comiso said he doubts the melt will be as slow as that. Instead, as the dense ice disappears and exposes the ocean for the first time in millennia, the ocean will pull in greater and greater amounts of solar energy. This is bound to speed up the rate of the melt, Comiso said.
     As well, satellite data show that the surface temperature of the permanent ice is rising at the rate of 1.2 degrees C every decade, meaning that that could force the ice to melt even faster.
     The findings have huge implications for the global climate. Arctic snow and ice play a key role in controlling the planet's temperature. They act as insulation, keeping heat and moisture in the land and ocean and out of the atmosphere.
     But once the ice and snow are gone, that dynamic will end and this will affect climate all over the planet in ways scientists have not yet fathomed.
     The cause of all this warmth, said Tom Agnew, a research meteorologist with the Meteorology Service of Canada, is linked to the greenhouse-gas emissions that humans are pumping into the atmosphere as they burn fossil fuels.
     And while Comiso's findings show that the warming and melting cycle is happening faster than expected, scientists have long predicted that the disrupted climate eventually will cause the permanent Arctic ice to vanish. Instead, the Arctic Ocean will partly freeze in the winter and thaw in the summer.
     Scientists do not believe the thawing trend is reversible.
     "This change is already taking effect," Agnew said. "The whole system is very slow to start and also very slow to stop. Once we've started on the course, we can't change."

REPORT: RECORD ARCTIC ICE MELTING
(By Kathleen O'Neil for the Daily Camera)

     Summer ice may be gone by 2050, researchers say.
     Warm temperatures over the arctic region and Greenland caused record-breaking melting of ice this summer, possibly due to global warming, University of Colorado researchers report...
     ...Sea and glacier ice are important because they reflect sunlight in the spring and summer, and keep the oceans warmer in winter. Loss of that ice can contribute to warmer global temperatures, the researcher said.
     Arctic sea ice that floats over the north pole shrank to its lowest recorded levels this summer. Researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado have been following trends in sea ice since the 1970s using satellite data...
     ...Since 1980 there has been a significant trend of melting ice, center scientist Mark Serreze said, culminating in this year's record-low measurements. In September, frozen sea water in the Arctic covered 17 percent less area than average, about 2 million square miles, according to Serreze and his co-researchers...
     ...Unusually warm arctic temperatures were responsible, Steffen said. Warm air caused the Greenland ice sheet to melt 9 percent more than the previous maximum. An additional 265,000 square miles of ice melted, extending to northern and high-elevation areas (that) have not melted before, he said...
     ...The icebergs melt faster than ice on land and speed up sea level rise, Steffen said. The oceans are rising by about half an inch every 10 years, he said.
     No one is sure why the Arctic is warming. The leading theory, Serreze said, is that the loss of ozone above the north pole has led to a cooler upper atmosphere, which leads to a pattern of air circulation that results in warmer land and sea temperatures. That could also explain the unusually strong spring storms the region has experienced recently, causing the ice to crack and melt more in summer, he said.
     The melting Green land and arctic ice could create a cold water cap in the North Atlantic that would change global ocean circulation patterns and climate, Serreze said. If this trend continues, by 2050 there may be no ice at all over the Arctic in the summer.
     "I've always been on the fence for the global warming debate, but the last few years have definitely tipped me toward the global warming side," Serreze said.

NATIONAL PARK'S FAMOUS GLACIERS DISAPPEARING--QUICKLY
(By Usha Lee McFarling for the Los Angeles Times)

     Glacier National Park, Montana--When naturalists first hiked through Glacier National Park more than a century ago, 150 glaciers graced its high cliffs and jagged peaks. Today there are 35.
     The cold slivers that remain are disintegrating so fast that scientists estimate the park will have no glaciers in 30 years...
     ...The dwindling glaciers amid the deeply chiseled landscape of this national park offer the clearest and most visible sign of climate change in America. It is an omen that even a child can grasp in an instant. Ice that has lasted in these high alpine valleys since the end of the Stone Age will soon vanish...
     ...The melting here is being mimicked around the world, from the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to the ice fields beneath Mount Everest in the Himalayas. Experts predict that glaciers in the high Andes, the Swiss Alps and even Iceland could disappear in coming decades as well...
     ...While the team (that is studying this melting phenomenon) has spent much of its tenure here talking about streamflow data, snowfall records and vegetation dynamics, they have started talking about something new: the loss of beauty. These scientists know that they are recording the last vestiges of a world that may soon exist only in their computers, photographs and memories--a world their grandchildren may never see...
     ...Most scientists agree the recent warming is mainly a product of industrial activity.

EARTH WEEK: WARMING MIGRATIONS
(By Steve Newman for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate)

     Two separate teams of biologists from the United States report in the journal Nature that they have detected a discernible reaction of several species to the ongoing global warming--a move to cooler environments. Camielle Parmesan, of the University of Texas at Austin, says that her team's "meta-analysis" of studies of more than 1,700 species indicate that many are forsaking their usual ranges for cooler or higher habitats. Parmesan says that there has been a migration of 3.8 miles per year, or several feet higher in elevation, for some of the wildlife studied. Events that normally happen in spring, such as the laying of eggs, have been moved up by 2.3 days per decade, according to the researchers.

SCIENTISTS LINK POLLUTION, DROUGHT
(By Joseph B. Verrengia for the Associated Press)

     Nearly two decades after one of the world's most devastating famines in Africa, scientists are pointing a finger at pollution from industrial nations as one of the possible causes.
     The starvation brought on by the 1970-85 drought that stretched from Senegal to Ethiopia captured the world's attention with searing images: skeletal mothers staring vacantly, children with bloated bellies lying in the sand, vultures lurking nearby. Before rains finally returned, 1.2 million people had died.
     Now, a group of scientists in Australia and Canada say that drought may have been triggered by tiny particles of sulfur dioxide spewed by factories and power plants thousands of miles away in North America, Europe and Asia.
     The short-lived pollution particles, known as aerosols, didn't have to travel to Africa to do their dirty work. Instead, they were able to alter the physics of cloud formation miles away and reduce rainfall in Africa as much as 50 percent, say the researchers, who used a computer to simulate the atmospheric conditions.
     The process, known as tele-connection, continues in the atmosphere today. Some scientists suspect it might help explain the drought gripping parts of the United States...
     ...One interesting clue: In the 1990s, rain returned to the Sahara. During the same period, emissions laws in the industrialized West reduced aerosol pollution. A coincidence? Scientists don't think so.

OZONE HOLE CLOSING
(From Moveon.Org)

     In September, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization announced that the hole in the ozone is closing. It should fully recover by 2050 if current trends continue. At its peak, the hole was three times the size of Australia. A global ban on CFCs under the Montreal Protocol of the 1990's has helped reduce CFC usage to the point where their levels in the atmosphere have begun to fall. Scientists say that the closing of the hole demonstrates how well global environmental protocols work, which could help gain more support for the Kyoto Protocol.

SCIENTISTS: HUMANS AT HEART OF WARMING
(By Joan Lowy for the Scripps Howard News Service)

     With 2002 on track to be the second-warmest year on record, scientists said Monday they are confident that human activity, rather than a natural variation in Earth's climate, is responsible for the unprecedented warming trend of the past two decades...
     ...The 16 warmest years since record-keeping began in 1880 have all occurred since 1980. Last year was the second-warmest, but now drops to third.
     Indeed, studies show that 1998 and 2002 are the two warmest years in the Northern Hemisphere in at least the last 1,000 years, said University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann...
     ...Scientist had thought the record temperatures of the past two decades might be attributed to a natural, temporary warm spell. But the persistent increase in warming has "now taken us to a level that is well outside natural variability," Hansen said. "It is now clear that human (activity) has become dominant over the natural variability."
     The human activity chiefly responsible for warming is the emission of carbon dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels like, oil, coal and gas, scientists believe. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased more than 30 percent since the start of the industrial revolution 200 years ago, with most of the increase occurring in the last 50 years.

GLOBE WARMS; BUSH FIDDLES
(By the Editorial Staff of the Denver Post)

     Coloradans have reason to feel profoundly disappointed by President Bush's tepid response to global warming.
     Our Rocky Mountain environment could suffer significantly if Earth's average temperatures continue creeping upward, yet the administration advocates a do-nothing policy.
     Ironically, the Bush administration itself recently published a climate-change report containing some of the strongest statements to date from the U.S. government about how the world is getting hotter and the burning of fossil fuels is adding to the problem...
     ...The outlook isn't pretty for Colorado's major geographical areas: the Rocky Mountains, desert southwest, and agricultural Eastern Plains:

• Snowfall may diminish in the Rocky Mountains, depriving our ski resorts of their most precious asset, Colorado's famed deep power.
  
• Spring snows may not come. Without the runoff from late-season snows, municipal reservoirs may not get refilled, and towns and cities could find themselves bickering over disappearing water resources.
  
• Alpine meadows and tundra in the Rockies' higher elevations are likely to disappear entirely in some regions.
  
• The growth rate of our region's forests will slow, while their vulnerability to insect infestations--and thus wildfires--may increase.
  
• Cool-loving aspen, spruce and fir forests may shrink or completely vanish in some places.
  
• Trout fishing may decrease, as the cold waters these species need to thrive will gradually get too warm.
  
• Grazing lands may shrink, hurting both agriculture ranges and wildlife habitat.
  
• Warmer temperatures combined with agricultural runoff of fertilizers and other chemicals will cause algae blooms in lakes, depleting the water of the life-sustaining oxygen for fish and other aquatic species.
  
• The desert southwest may see a perverse and dangerous confluence of increasing moisture during the winter and hotter temperatures in the summer, a perfect recipe for intense wildfires.
  
• As the north's historic harsh winters grow milder, some insect species that now are limited to a few parts of the country may invade our region's farmland.
  
• Invasive weeds could rapidly spread as the warmer climate creates opportunities for them to break out of their endemic areas...