Arctic climate change ‘is happening much faster than our most pessimistic models expected’

By Rod Nickel
WINNIPEG, Manitoba
Fri Feb 5, 2010 7:32pm EST WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, scientists said on Friday in giving their early findings from the biggest-ever study of Canada’s changing north. The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada’s high Arctic for an entire winter. “(Climate change) is happening much faster than our most pessimistic models expected,” said David Barber, a professor at the University of Manitoba and the study’s lead investigator, at a news conference in Winnipeg. Models predicted only a few years ago that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100, but the increasing pace of climate change now suggests it could happen between 2013 and 2030, Barber said. Scientists link higher Arctic temperatures and melting sea ice to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. The Arctic is considered a type of early-warning system of climate change for the rest of the world. “We know we’re losing sea ice — the world is all aware of that,” Barber said. “What you’re not aware of is that it has impacts on everything else that goes on in this system.” The loss of the sea ice is taking away areas for the region’s mammals to reproduce, find food and elude predators, said Steve Ferguson, a scientist with the Canadian government who took part in the study. …

Arctic climate changing faster than expected