By BOB WEBER, The Canadian Press Climate change is already having a dramatic effect on plants in the High Arctic, turning the once rocky tundra a deep shade of green and creating what could be another mechanism speeding up global warming. In a new study to be published in the November issue of the journal […]
KODIAK ISLAND, Alaska, August 24, 2009 (ENS) – Billions of tons of carbon are buried in the frozen Arctic tundra, now heating up because of human-caused climate change. To measure which greenhouse gases are being released and in what quantities, government scientists are flying instrument-laden planes over the tundra from now through November. They say […]
The graphs show Iceland Sea winter surface water changes in pH, and the saturation state of aragonite. The anthropogenic increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide affects the Nordic Seas both at the surface and at depth. In the surface, the pH has decreased from 8.13 to 8.08 between 1985 and 2008, and the aragonite saturation, which […]
Features formed by melting permafrost provide clues to a changing Arctic landscape and climate By Lisa Jarvis There is a profound quietude north of Alaska’s Brooks Range, the string of mountains separating the boreal forest from the Arctic tundra. Traveling along the Dalton Highway, the one road to the Arctic Ocean, one sees little visible […]
The warming of an Arctic current over the last 30 years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from methane hydrate stored in the sediment beneath the seabed. Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany […]
The same things that make Alaska’s marine waters among the most productive in the world may also make them the most vulnerable to ocean acidification. According to new findings by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, Alaska’s oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, which could damage Alaska’s king crab and salmon fisheries. This spring, chemical oceanographer […]
TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories – The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap. From the barren Arctic shore of this village in Canada’s far northwest, 1,500 […]
Without drastic cuts in emissions, the Transpolar Drift, one of the Arctic’s most powerful currents and a key disperser of pollutants, is likely to disappear because of global warming by Kate Ravilious WITHIN 60 years the Arctic Ocean could be a stagnant, polluted soup. Without drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, the Transpolar Drift, one of […]
Cumulative (a) specific and (b) total mass balances of glaciers and ice caps, calculated for large regions [Dyurgerov and Meier, 2005]. Specific mass balances signalize the strength of the glacier response to climatic change in each region. Total mass balances indicate each region’s contribution to sea level. G. Kaser, J. G. Cogley, M. B. Dyurgerov, […]
Climate change is speeding up the release of carbon dioxide from frigid peatlands in the sub-Arctic, fuelling a vicious circle of global warming, according to a recently published study. An increase of just 1°C over current average temperatures would more than double the CO2 escaping from the peatlands. Northern peatlands contain one-third of the planet’s […]
