By LAUREN MORELLO of ClimateWireAugust 10, 2010 For generations, Yupik and Inupiat hunters have depended on the Pacific walrus. They ate the walrus’ meat and whittled its bones into tools. Walrus skin covered their boats, and walrus intestines, stitched into raincoats, covered their backs. Today, the walrus is still an important part of the subsistence […]
By Mark TamhanePosted Fri Aug 6, 2010 6:03pm AEST Polar bears, the icon of the Arctic, are under threat from the twin challenges of climate change and chemicals that are not breaking down in the region’s cold waters. Research published in the journal Science of The Total Environment shows the retreat of sea-ice in the […]
Fairbanks, Alaska — Permafrost warming continues throughout a wide swath of the Northern Hemisphere, according to a team of scientists assembled during the recent International Polar Year. Their extensive findings, published in the April-June 2010 edition of Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, describe the thermal state of high-latitude permafrost during the International Polar Year, 2007-2009. Vladimir […]
The population of Steller’s sea lions is declining so rapidly in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands that the Obama administration is calling for the emergency closure of commercial mackerel and cod fishing there. The fishing industry, largely based in Seattle, is alarmed and worried such measures could eventually lead to restrictions on parts of the $1 billion-a-year […]
Total annual river discharge to the Arctic Ocean from the six largest rivers in the Eurasian Arctic for the observational period 1936–2008 (updated from Peterson et al. 2002) (red line) and from the four large North American pan-Arctic rivers over 1970–2008 (blue line). The least squares linear trend lines are shown as dashed lines. Provisional […]
Loss of sea ice is unlikely to enable Arctic waters to mop up more carbon dioxide from the air. By Hannah Hoag As climate scientists watched the Arctic’s sea-ice cover shrink year after year, they thought there might be a silver lining: an ice-free Arctic Ocean could soak up large amounts of CO2 from the […]
By Maria Kolesnikova in Moscow, editors: Brad Cook, Alex Nicholson.July 20, 2010, 8:22 AM EDT July 20 (Bloomberg) — Arctic sea ice is melting faster than expected and this season’s loss may match the record reached three years ago, Russia’s environmental agency said. “Ice in the Arctic is melting very fast,” Federal Hydrometeorological and Environmental […]
The polar bear has long been a symbol of the damage wrought by global warming, but now biologist Andrew Derocher and his colleagues have calculated how long one southerly population can hold out. Their answer? No more than a few decades, as the bears’ decline closely tracks that of the Arctic’s disappearing sea ice. No […]
By DAN JOLING (AP) – 10 July 2010 ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Interior Department is offering oil and gas leases on 1.8 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve while promising to protect critical migratory bird and caribou habitat. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Friday that the Bureau of Land Management will offer 190 tracts, […]
By Jeff Hecht 09 July 2010 12:20 With carbon dioxide levels close to our own, the Arctic of the Pliocene epoch may have warmed much more than previously thought – and the modern Arctic could go the same way. Ashley Ballantyne at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues analysed 4-million-year-old Pliocene peat samples from […]
