updated 12-05

THE MYSTERY OF GLOBAL WARMING

Published by the Department of Navy Look at how warm it is near the north Pole

Major temperature rise recorded in Arctic this year: German scientists PARIS (AFP) Aug 27, 2004 http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/040827174145.s71k5at1.html German scientists probing global warming said Friday they had detected a major temperature rise this year in the Arctic Ocean and linked this to a progressive shrinking of the region's sea ice. Temperatures recorded this year in the upper 500 metres (1,625 feet) of sea in the Fram Strait -- the gap between Greenland and the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen -- were up to 0.6 C (1.08 F) higher than in 2003, they said in a press release received here. The rise was detectable to a water depth of 2,000 metres (6,500 feet), "representing an exceptionally strong signal by ocean standards," it said. The experts, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, have been recording temperatures aboard a specialised vessel, Polarstern (Pole Star), for the past six weeks. The sampling has been taking place in the West Spitsbergen Current, which carries warm water from the Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean. The institute said water in the Fram Strait has been warming steadily since 1990 and over the past three years, satellite images had documented "a clear recession" of sea ice edges, both in the strait and the Barents Sea. The latest data "point towards a further warming tendency," the institute said. In June, a UN organisation announced that American scientists had detected an "alarmingly rapid growth" this year in airborne concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the fossil-fuel pollutant blamed for global warming. CO2 levels recorded in March 2004 at Hawaii measured 379 parts per million (ppm), an increase of three ppm over the previous year. By comparison, there had been an annual increase of only 1.8 ppm over the past decade. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 before the Industrial Revolution were 280 ppm. The June announcement was made at a conference on renewable energies in Bonn by Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -- the United Nations' paramount environment accord. CO2 is the most important of the six "greenhouse" gases blamed for driving changes to the world's delicate climate system. These gases hang like an invisible shroud in the atmosphere, trapping the Sun's heat and inflicting what many scientists predict will be serious changes to icecaps, glaciers and weather patterns. In the Earth's distant past, climate change has occurred naturally, by emissions of CO2 disgorged by volcanoes and other phenomena. But the overwhelming majority of climate experts say CO2 levels are rising fast today because of the unbridled burning of oil, gas and coal. Opinions differ, though, as to how fast the effects will occur and how bad they will be.

8-20-04 The Shrinking Arctic Sea Ice      "There's a fairly wide body of evidence there is change occurring," said Mark Serreze, a polar scientist at the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center who led the review. The Arctic Ocean has also warmed thousands of feet below the surface, he said.      Arctic sea ice covers about 9 million square miles in early spring and 5 million square miles in early fall. The sea ice cover has shrunk by more than 6% since 1978, according to satellite images. Sea ice is generally about 10 feet thick, though that can be highly variable due to wind and weather conditions.      The thickness of sea ice appears to have been cut nearly in half over the last four decades, according to sonar data from Cold War submarines recently analyzed by Rothrock. His findings showed that ice thickness had decreased on average from 10.2 feet in the 1960s to 5.9 feet in the 1990s.      The motion of sea ice and the opening and closing of cracks may play a large role in regulating temperatures around the globe. The North Pole acts as a heat sink: It stays cold because it is dark for much of the year and because snow and ice there reflect warming sunlight back into space.      Less ice cover means more warmth for the poles--and eventually for the entire Earth. More recently, scientists have discovered that sea ice changes affect the circulation of ocean waters and the Gulf Stream, changes that could alter temperatures far from the poles.      The main question, still unresolved, is whether warming seen in the Arctic and elsewhere is prompted by human or natural causes. The answers from these remote and inhospitable regions will still be difficult to find.      Even the current satellite technology, for example, has trouble distinguishing melting spring sea ice from water--a problem that can make readings of spring and summer ice less reliable than those of winter ice. The shifting pictures are also complicated by winds and storms that affect the ice pack. Another mystery: While ice cover has decreased at the North Pole, it has increased around Antarctica.      "Today, with all our capability and technology, we really don't know that much about Arctic sea ice," said Serreze.      In the meantime, he said, observations such as the one made by tourists at the North Pole are interesting, but not much more than that.      "An observation has to be taken in context," said Serreze. "The point is, we don't have the context." * * *     McFarling can be reached at usha.mcfarling@latimes.com

Source:   Georgia Institute Of Technology 2004-06-25 Abrupt Climate Change: New Research Supports Hypothesis That Ocean Currents Redistributed Heat During Rapid Warming And Cooling A paper published this week in the journal Science supports the hypothesis that heat transfer by ocean currents – rather than global heating or cooling – may have been responsible for the global temperature patterns associated with the abrupt climate changes seen in the North Atlantic during the past 80,000 years. Authored by the University of Bremen's Frank Lamy and colleagues, the paper provides new evidence that Southern Hemisphere climate may not have changed in step with Northern Hemisphere climate. Though these new measurements of ocean surface temperature off Chile are consistent with information from Antarctic ice core samples, they still contradict measurements made on land in the Southern Hemisphere – suggesting additional research will be needed to resolve the issue. Scientists have found evidence of rapid and dramatic climate change that took place in a matter of decades during cool periods of the last 80,000 years in the North Atlantic. Knowing whether climate changes took place simultaneously in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres is vital to understanding the mechanism involved – and assessing whether similar abrupt climate change could be a threat today. "People are very interested in these dramatic climate changes because they occur on very human time scales," said Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author of a "Perspectives" article accompanying the Lamy paper in Science. "It's really important to understand what is causing them and what conditions are necessary for the climate to rapidly transition from cold to warm and back again." To understand past climate conditions, scientists study ice cores taken from frozen areas such as Greenland and Antarctica, and sediment cores taken from the ocean floor. The Northern Hemisphere has been well studied, but comparatively little data exists about the Southern Hemisphere, which has more open ocean area which provides scant data. And the information that exists about the Southern Hemisphere is contradictory, with pollen samples and land-based data from southern Chile and New Zealand suggesting climate change synchronized with the Northern Hemisphere – and Antarctic ice cores suggesting the opposite. Lynch-Stieglitz, who co-authored an earlier paper based on less detailed South Atlantic data, believes the new paper represents progress toward understanding Southern Hemisphere climate change. "The real significance of this paper is that it gets us closer to understanding the mechanism causing these rapid climate changes," she said. "Earlier sediment core work at lower resolution has suggested that the Southern Hemisphere has been doing its own thing. The record from Antarctica is nicely resolved and shows that the Southern Hemisphere is not participating either in magnitude or timing with the climate changes that have occurred in the North Atlantic." The Lamy researchers studied sediment cores taken from a location off the coast of southern Chile where sediment builds up rapidly, providing detailed information about climate change with good time resolution. Their 50,000-year record is consistent with Antarctic ice core data showing that Southern Hemisphere climate change did not occur at the same or in the same magnitude as Northern Hemisphere change. "What this paper suggests is that that when it was really cold off Greenland in the North Atlantic, it was actually a bit warm off Chile," said Lynch-Stieglitz. "That's very similar to the record in Antarctica. The fact that the ocean off Chile looks so much like what has been going on in Antarctica gives us hope that there may be a consistent response throughout the Southern Hemisphere." Knowing what was happening in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres is important because the mechanisms that could have caused synchronized change differ dramatically from those that could have caused unsynchronized change. Both hemispheres warming and cooling at the same time would imply global changes caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases. But one hemisphere cooling while the other warmed would suggest simple heat transfer, accomplished by changes in ocean or atmospheric currents. "You can make the climate cool in certain places just by redistributing the heat through changes in ocean currents, atmospheric circulation or both," said Lynch-Stieglitz. "The most fully developed theory to account for these rapid climate changes is that they do represent changes in the transport of heat into the North Atlantic by what we call overturning circulation of the ocean." In that scenario, warm water flows northward from the Southern Hemisphere into the North Atlantic, where it gives up its heat. Being denser, the cooled water then sinks and flows back south. The scenario accounts for both heating in the north and cooling in the south. It's possible, Lynch-Stieglitz notes, that both global warming and changes in ocean heat transport occurred simultaneously, though records of carbon dioxide concentrations do not show concentration increases that would be enough by themselves to account for the climate change. The Lamy paper provides the best measurement yet of ocean surface temperature in the Southern Hemisphere, but its information alone will not resolve the question of whether synchronized climates changes have occurred. Ultimately, geologists will have to find other ocean locations with sufficient sedimentation to settle the issue. "Because so much of the Southern Hemisphere is open ocean, the sediments are accumulating very slowly in most locations," she added. "We've got to find other locations where sediments are accumulating rapidly." Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here. This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Georgia Institute Of Technology.

Melting Ice 'Will Swamp Capitals' 12-6-03 (The Independent - UK) Measures to fight global warming will have to be at least four times stronger than the Kyoto Protocol if they are to  avoid the melting of the polar ice caps, inundating central London and many of the world's biggest cities, concludes a new official report. The report, written by eight leading German professors, says that "dangerous climatic changes" will become "highly probable" if the world's average temperature is allowed to increase to more than 2 degrees centigrade above what it was before the start of the Industrial Revolution. Beyond that level the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice cap would begin gradually to melt away, eventually raising sea levels world wide by up to 30 feet, submerging vast areas of land and key cities worldwide. London, New York, Miami, Bombay, Calcutta, Sydney, Shanghai, Lagos and Tokyo would be among those largely submerged by such a rise.

No Doubts Global Warming Is Real Say US Experts 12-5-03 WASHINGTON (Reuters) There can be no doubt that global warming is real and is being caused by people, two top U.S. government climate experts said. Industrial emissions are a leading cause, they say -- contradicting critics, already in the minority, who argue that climate change could be caused by mostly natural forces. "There is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing because of human activities, and today greenhouse gases are the largest human influence on global climate," wrote Thomas Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, and Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "The likely result is more frequent heat waves, droughts, extreme precipitation events, and related impacts, e.g., wildfires, heat stress, vegetation changes, and sea-level rise,"* they added in a commentary to be published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Karl and Trenberth estimate that, between 1990 and 2100, there is a 90 percent probability that average global temperatures will rise by between 3.1 and 8.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 and 4.9 degrees Celsius) because of human influences on climate.

France braced for "floods of century" 12-3-03 LYON, France (Reuters) Torrential rain drenching parts of  southeastern France threaten to worsen flash floods that have cost at least three lives and forced about 4,000 people to evacuate their homes. Flooding along the Rhone River from Lyon to Marseille was due to hit its peak during the day, while winds of up to 150 kph were expected to lash the Mediterranean coast, officials said. Heavy rain moving west also set off flood alerts reaching as far as the Pyranees Mountains. A spokeswoman for the government nuclear safety authority ASN said two reactors were shut early on Tuesday as a precaution after the heavy rains. She said the restarting of the reactors would depend on river levels. ... didn't we just have a 'flood of the century'? Global Warming 'Could Close Half Of Alpine Ski Resorts' The Telegraph - UK (12-3-3) More than half of all ski resorts in the Alps could be forced out of business in the next 50 years by rising temperatures, according to research published yesterday. Its predictions are based on scientific estimates that temperatures will increase by between 1.4C (2.5F) and 5.8C (10.4F)* during this century. This is expected to raise the snowline by up to 1,000ft, jeopardising the future of resorts below 5,900ft. Conversely, those above 6,500ft may fall victim to more avalanches. The research focused on Switzerland, where the loss of places such as Wildhaus and Unterwasser could cost the country £1 million a year through lost revenue. Already some European banks are refusing to lend money to low-level resorts. .

Oblivion threat to 12,000 species 11-18-03 (BBC) Another 2,000 species have been added to the annual Red List of the world's most endangered animals and plants. The "official" catalogue produced by IUCN-The World Conservation Union now includes more than 12,000 entries. Among the countries with the highest numbers of threatened birds and animals are Indonesia, India, Brazil, China and Peru. Plants are declining fast in Ecuador, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and Sri Lanka.

Storm cuts world's biggest iceberg Wednesday, November 5, 2003 B15A and B15J broke apart in October, polar scientists said. WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A powerful Antarctic storm has helped split apart an iceberg the size of Jamaica, a New Zealand scientist has said. The huge original iceberg, named B15 and measuring 11,000 square kilometers (4,400 square miles) broke into two pieces over the past month, according to data from satellites above the frozen southern continent. A jagged fracture spread across the iceberg, causing the split which "was expected eventually," said Mike Williams of New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research, on Tuesday. B15 had been grounded off the Ross Sea ice shelf coast of Antarctica for more than three years, pounded by storms and waves and tugged by coastal ocean currents. The two pieces, designated B15A and B15J by the U.S. National Ice Center in Maryland, are now slowly edging their way along the Ross Sea, he said. "They are still grounded on the Ross Sea floor by their weight," he said, adding there must have been "some inherent weakness" in the iceberg where it split in two. Eight other minor bergs have "calved" from B15 and drifted out of the Ross Sea region. The area is surrounded by the massive Ross ice shelf, a field of floating ice the size of France. U.S. iceberg researchers planted a global positioning system on B15A last week to track the movement of the giant ice block, the Antarctic Sun newspaper reported Sunday. It quoted Doug MacAyeal, a glaciologist at the University of Chicago working in Antarctica, as saying he wanted to track an iceberg through its phases until it disappears to write what he called a "users' guide to icebergs." The Ross Sea is on the Antarctic coast, 3,832 kilometers (2,395 miles) south of New Zealand. In March 2000, when B15 broke from the Ross Ice Shelf, it was identified as the longest known iceberg. While B15A remains immense, the title of iceberg king has passed to C19A, which is about 5,659 square kilometers (2,264 square miles), according to the Sun. Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Tuesday, 23 September, 2003 Arctic ice shelf splits The largest ice shelf in the Arctic has fractured, releasing all the water from the freshwater lake it dammed. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is located on the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's Nunavut territory. The huge mass of floating ice, which has been in place for at least 3,000 years, is now in two major pieces. The scientists who report the break-up in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) say it is further evidence of ongoing and accelerated climate change in the north polar region. The researchers - Warwick Vincent and Derek Mueller of Laval University in Quebec City, Canada; and Martin Jeffries of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, US - have been studying the shelf onsite and through satellite radar imagery and helicopter overflights. Lost water The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, which is 443 square kilometres in size, now has a major crack that runs right through it from north to south. The scientists say the fracturing - which has been developing since the spring of 2000 - is the end result of a three-decade-long decline. "We're now seeing some very extensive fractures in it that extend many kilometres horizontally across the ice-shelf; and they extend all the way through from the top to the bottom, many tens of metres through the ice shelf. And we've never seen fractures like this," Dr Jeffries told the BBC. They warn that major free-floating ice islands could pose a danger to shipping and to drilling platforms in the Beaufort Sea. The immediate consequence of the rupture has been the loss of almost all of the freshwater from the Northern Hemisphere's largest epishelf lake (a body of mostly freshwater trapped behind an ice shelf). The freshwater lay in the 30-kilometre- [20-mile] long Disraeli Fiord. At its deepest, the freshwater measured 43 metres [140 feet], and sat atop 360 metres [1,200 feet] of denser ocean water. Other worlds The loss of fresh and brackish water has changed the environment for the microscopic animals and algae living in the area. "These are very rare and unusual ecosystems and they have been studied as possible analogues for life on a colder Earth and life on the planets," Dr Jeffries said. "And if we are losing them, we are losing the opportunity to study life earlier in Earth history and elsewhere in the Solar System." Scientists monitor continuously ice-shelf development in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. In the southern polar region, recent times have witnessed some dramatic changes. Last year, the 3,250-square-km Larsen B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula shattered over a period of a month into thousands of icebergs. The peninsula is one of the three fastest-warming regions on Earth - temperatures have gone up 2.5 degrees in 50 years. Global change Mueller, Vincent, and Jeffries say their calculations suggest changes of a similar nature have been taking place in the Ellesmere Island area. A century ago, the entire northern coast of the island was reported to be fringed with a continuous ice shelf. About 90% of that ice area had been lost by 1982, the scientists say. The precise timing of the break-up of the remnant Ward Hunt Ice Shelf may have been influenced by freeze-thaw cycles, wind, and tides, they tell GRL. Other factors may include changes in Arctic Ocean temperature, salinity, and flow patterns, they add. "Computer models show quite convincingly that global climate change would be manifested first and amplified in the polar regions and in particular in the Arctic," Dr Jeffries said "Our observations at Ward Hunt Ice Shelf fit in with a broader picture of Arctic change which fits in with our understanding of how the Arctic climate would respond to global change."

10-4-03 British deaths rose by 2,000 during heat wave by Emma Ross The Associated Press LONDON - About 2,000 more people than normal died during August's heat wave in England and Wales, the government reported Friday. Experts said the soaring temperatures most likely accelerated deaths that would have happened soon anyway. The estimates by the Office for National Statistics do not prove that the extra deaths were caused by the unusually hot weather; they identify a suspicious correlation. "There's a very convincing story that, in fact, the climate did cause excess deaths for a short period," said Dr. David Pencheon of the Institute of Public Health at Cambridge University in England. "There's no evidence that it kills off people who were not going to die in the next, say, two or three months," said Pencheon, who was nt connected with the report. "A lot of people at any one time are close to death. you only need a slight change for it to suddenly bunch together." Clare Griffiths, a senior mortality researcher at the Office for National Statistics, said that after a peak, deaths will dip lower than expected and then return to average. She said it was too soon to see whether that was true following the August heat wave. A study that examined deaths and temperatures from 1976 to 1996 in London found that deaths started to increase once the temperature reached 66 degrees. Still, the bunching effect, a well-known phenomenon of epidemiology, is much more pronounced in winter than in summer, experts say. The government statisticians noted that although deaths in August were higher than average, the peak number on Aug. 11 - right after the hottest day - was still lower than typical daily mortality in winter.

160,000 Said Dying Yearly from Global Warming By Alister Doyle MOSCOW (Reuters) - About 160,000 people die every year from side-effects of global warming (news - web sites) ranging from malaria to malnutrition and the numbers could almost double by 2020, a group of scientists said on Tuesday. The study, by scientists at the World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said children in developing nations seemed most vulnerable. "We estimate that climate change may already be causing in the region of 160,000 deaths...a year," Professor Andrew Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told a climate change conference in Moscow. "The disease burden caused by climate change could almost double by 2020," he added, even taking account of factors like improvements in health care. He said the estimates had not been previously published. Most deaths would be in developing nations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, which would be hardest hit by the spread of malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria in the wake o "These diseases mainly affect younger age groups, so that the total burden of disease due to climate change appears to be borne mainly by children in developing countries," Haines said. Milder winters, however, might mean that people would live longer on average in Europe or North America despite risks from heatwaves this summer in which about 15,000 people died in France alone. Haines said the study suggested climate change could "bring some health benefits, such as lower cold-related mortality and greater crop yields in temperate zones, but (that) these will be greatly outweighed by increased rates of other diseases." Russia is hosting a World Climate Change Conference this week to discuss how to rein in emissions of gases like carbon dioxide from factories and cars that scientists blame for blanketing the planet and nudging up temperatures. Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), who opened the conference on Monday, suggested in jest that global warming could benefit countries like Russia as people "would spend less money on fur coats and other warm things." But Putin also backed away from Russia's earlier pledge to swiftly ratify the key Kyoto pact on curbing global warming, a plan that will collapse without Moscow's backing. He told 940 delegates to the conference Russia was closely studying the issue of Kyoto. "A decision will be taken when this work is finished," he said, giving no timetable. Haines said small shifts in temperatures, for instance, could extend the range of mosquitoes that spread malaria. Water supplies could be contaminated by floods, for instance, which could also wash away crops. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20030930/sc_nm/environment_russia_health_dc ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Russia Puts Global Climate Pact in Doubt By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer MOSCOW (AP) -- A senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin outlined strong reservations Tuesday about ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, saying the pact to limit greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficiently grounded in science and would harm Russia's economic growth. Although Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, stopped short of ruling out Russia's ratification of the protocol, which is necessary for it to take effect, his strong criticism of the agreement appeared to leave little hope for approval of the document. Illarionov, an influential adviser, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. World Climate Change Conference. He made the remarks after Putin said Monday that his Cabinet hadn't yet made up its mind whether Russia would ratify the protocol. To go into effect, the 1997 protocol must be ratified by no fewer than 55 countries, accounting for at least 55 percent of global emissions in 1990. After the United States rejected the treaty, the minimum can be reached only with Russia's ratification. Illarionov said that the United States and Australia opted out of the protocol after deciding that compliance would be too expensive, and that it would be even less affordable for Russia, which has a much smaller economy. He elaborated on Putin's statement Monday that Russia could benefit from global warming, saying that warmer temperatures would help increase harvests, cut energy consumption and open ice-encrusted seas to navigation. "Public opinion was artificially focused on negative consequences of climate change, but there are also positive consequences for both our country and the planet as a whole," Illarionov said. Yuri Vorobyov, Russia's deputy minister for emergency situations, challenged Illarionov's optimism, telling the conference that warmer temperatures could increase the number of catastrophic floods and damage energy pipelines and other infrastructure in the north. Whatever the consequences, Illarionov voiced doubts about global warming being a stable trend, echoing Russian scientists who told the conference that the Kyoto protocol's advocates had failed to prove that emissions trigger global warming. They pointed at other factors, such as volcanic eruptions and the ocean's impact, saying they need to be more thoroughly analyzed. The Kyoto Protocol calls for countries to reduce their level of greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. If a country exceeds the emissions level, it could be forced to cut back industrial production. Russia's emissions have fallen by 32 percent since 1990 largely due to the post-Soviet industrial meltdown, but they have started to rise again as the economy revived. Illarionov said that the Kyoto Protocol would hamper Putin's goal of doubling Russia's gross domestic product in 10 years and the subsequent growth by requiring Russia to launch a costly overhaul of its industries in order to cut emissions. He said that doubling the GDP will bring Russia's emissions to 104 percent of their 1990 level, conflicting with the protocol. "But Russia isn't going to stop at this level, so the carbon dioxide level will be much higher," Illarionov said. He said that the United States, China and many other nations staying out of the protocol account for 68 percent of global emissions, making the document largely senseless. He said that Russia currently accounts for some 6 percent of global emissions compared to U.S. share of 25 percent and China's 13 percent. "We are facing a bizarre situation when Russia, which makes less emissions, must cut them, while nations which make much more, like the United States and China, won't curb them," Illarionov said. "That raises the question about the document's efficiency," he added. "No matter what sacrifice Russia makes, it won't bring us closer to the goal. It would be strange to undertake such obligations if they aren't universal."

Not just warmer: it's the hottest for 2,000 years Widest study yet backs fears over carbon dioxide Ian Sample, science correspondent Monday September 1, 2003 <http://www.guardian.co.uk>The Guardian The earth is warmer now than it has been at any time in the past 2,000 years, the most comprehensive study of climatic history has revealed. Confirming the worst fears of environmental scientists, the newly published findings are a blow to sceptics who maintain that global warming is part of the natural climatic cycle rather than a consequence of human industrial activity. Prof Philip Jones, a director of the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit and one of the authors of the research, said: "You can't explain this rapid warming of the late 20th century in any other way. It's a response to a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere." The study reinforces recent conclusions published by the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). Scientists on the panel looked at temperature data from up to 1,000 years ago and found that the late 20th century was the warmest period on record. But the IPCC's report was dismissed by some quarters in the scientific community who claimed that while the planet is undoubtedly warming, it was warmer still more than a thousand years ago. So warm, in fact, that it had spurred the Vikings to set up base in Greenland and led to northern Britain being filled with productive vineyards. To discover whether there was any truth in the claims, Prof Jones teamed up with Prof Michael Mann, a climate expert at the University of Virginia, and set about reconstructing the world's climate over the past 2,000 years. Direct measurements of the earth's temperature do not exist from such a long time ago, so the scientists had to rely on other indicators of how warm - or not - the planet was throughout the past two millennia. To find the answer, the scientists looked at tree trunks, which keep a record of the local climate: the rings spreading out from the centre grow to different thicknesses according to the climate a tree grows in. The scientists looked at sections taken from trees that had lived for hundreds and even thousands of years from different regions and used them to piece together a picture of the planet's climatic history. The scientists also studied cores of ice drilled from the icy stretches of Greenland and Antarctica. As the ice forms, sometimes over hundreds of thousands of years, it traps air, which holds vital clues to the local climate at the time. "Drill down far enough and you could use the ice to look at the climate hundreds of thousands of years ago, but we just used the first thousand metres," said Prof Jones. The scientists found that while there was not enough good data to work out what the climate had been like in the southern hemisphere over that period, they could get a good idea of how warm the northern hemisphere had been. "What we found was that at no point during those two millennia had it been any warmer than it is now. From 1980 onwards is clearly the warmest period of the last 2,000 years," said Prof Jones. Some regions may well have been fairly warm, especially during the medieval period, but on average, the planet was a cooler place, the study found. Looking back over a succession of earlier centuries, the temperature fluctuated slightly, becoming slightly warmer or cooler by 0.2C in each century. The temperature has increased by at least that amount in the past 20 or so years, the scientists report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "It just shows how dramatic the warming has been in recent years," said Prof Jones. Scientists who do not believe that carbon dioxide is driving climate change are unlikely to run up the white flag just yet, however. Dr Sallie Baliunas at the Harvard College Observatory in Massachusetts, for example, maintains that the recent warming could all be down to changes in the strength of sunlight falling on the planet. She concluded that during the 20th century, earth went through a cycle of natural climatic change. According to her data, from 1900 to 1940 the planet warmed slightly, then cooled from 1940 until 1970, then warmed up again from 1970 onwards. Given that 80% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions have been produced since 1940, the expected effect, if carbon dioxide was causing global warming, would be higher temperatures not lower, she said. Dr Baliunas's data also concluded that the period of warming between 1900 and 1940 must have been due to natural causes, most likely increased sunlight hitting the earth's surface, since carbon dioxide emissions were negligible at the time. The evidence, she said, pointed to variations in the sun's brightness being the cause of the planet's warming up, not carbon dioxide. But other climatologists have welcomed the new study as the most conclusive evidence to date that the increase in temperature is a result of human activity. "The importance of the finding is that it shows there's something going on in the climate system that's certainly unusual in the context of the last 2,000 years, and it's likely that greenhouse gases are playing the major role," said Prof Chris Folland of the Met Office's Hadley Centre. "If you look at the natural ups and downs in temperature, you'll find nothing remotely like what we're seeing now." Cold water on climate claims Not everyone agrees that climate change is largely driven by human activity. Some believe the warming the planet is experiencing now is part of a natural cycle. Historical anecdotes are sometimes used to support their case, but the new study debunks these claims. · There were vineyards in the north of Britain There were indeed vineyards in Britain in the 10th and 11th centuries, but only 50 to 60. There are now more than 350 in this country, with some as far north as Leeds. · The Vikings went to Greenland In AD 980, Erik the Red and his crew headed from Iceland to Greenland, but it wasn't for the good weather. Erik had been kicked out of Iceland for murder so he took his crew westward where, they were told, they would find land. · The Thames used to freeze over more often The river's tendency to freeze over frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries is often cited as evidence that the climate used to be more erratic. But, according to the new study, the major cause was the original London Bridge, completed in the 13th century, which had very small spans between its supports for the Thames to run through. The result was that the river was tidal only as far as the bridge, causing the water to freeze over. When the bridge was rebuilt to a different design in the 1820s, the water flowed more easily and therefore became less prone to ice. http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1032984,00.html

Alaskan Warming is Disturbing Preview of What's to Come Date: 9/3/2003 Alaskan Warming is Disturbing Preview of What's to Come, Scientists Say Knight Ridder Newspapers by Seth Borenstein http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0731-04.htm ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska is melting. Global warming has caused the Columbia Glacier to retreat 7 miles in the last 20 years, leaving calves of ice in Prince William Sound. Seth Borenstein, KRT. Glaciers are receding. Permafrost is thawing. Roads are collapsing. Forests are dying. Villages are being forced to move, and animals are being forced to seek new habitats. What's happening in Alaska is a preview of what people farther south can expect, said Robert Corell, a former top National Science Foundation scientist who heads research for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment team. "If you want to see what will be happening in the rest of the world 25 years from now, just look at what's happening in the Arctic," Corell said. Alaska and the Arctic are warming up fast, top international scientists will tell senior officials from eight Arctic countries at a conference in Iceland next week. They will disclose early, disturbing findings from a massive study of polar climate change. In Alaska, year-round average temperatures have risen by 5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, and average winter temperatures soared 8 degrees in that period, according to the federal government. The entire world is expected to warm by 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, predict scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change. 2002 was the hottest year in Alaskan history, and this past winter was the second warmest on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which found that Alaskan temperatures began to rise dramatically in 1976. This July, Anchorage recorded its second highest temperature ever as tourists got suntans. Deborah Williams, the executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, used to take visitors from the Lower 48 to the famous Portage Glacier just outside Anchorage, where the $8 million Begich-Boggs visitor center opened in 1986. By 1993, the Portage glacier had receded so much that it no longer could be seen from the visitors' center. Williams still takes visitors to the site, seeing the glacier's retreat as a warning. "Alaska is the melting tip of the iceberg, the panting canary," said Williams, who was the chief Interior Department official for Alaska during the Clinton administration. Portage is "a glacier that's almost out of water; it's thinned dramatically," said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Bruce Molnia, the author of the book "Glaciers of Alaska." About 98 percent of Alaska's glaciers are retreating or stagnant, he said. Alaskan glaciers add 13.2 trillion gallons of melted water to the seas each year - the equivalent of more than 13 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, University of Alaska in Fairbanks scientists concluded after a decade of studying glaciers with airborne lasers. The rate of glacier run-off has doubled over just a few decades, they found. Alaska's melting glaciers are the No. 1 reason the oceans are rising, Molnia said. Another frozen staple of Alaska's northernmost lands - permafrost - is also thawing and "is probably the biggest problem on land," said Gunter Weller, director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Permafrost is land that stays frozen year-round. Villages rely on the hard permafrost to prevent beach erosion from violent ocean storms. Two Alaskan native villages, Shishmaref and Kivalina, must relocate because melting permafrost has caused beach erosion, leaving the towns vulnerable to severe storms. In 1986 the federal government built an $8 million visitors center here next to the Portage Glacier. The glacier is no longer visible from the visitors center. Seth Borenstein, KRT About 600 people live in 150 homes in Shishmaref, a centuries-old village on a barrier island just south of the Arctic Circle. On the island's northern edge, erosion is so severe that the village voted to move two years ago, but villagers haven't been able to find a new site or money to finance the massive undertaking, said Percy Nayokpuk, president of the Shishmaref Native Corporation. "It's a matter of safety," Nayokpuk said. "We're on this small low island. One bad storm could possibly wipe out the village. There is nowhere to run." Melting permafrost also means trouble for the oil industry. Oil companies build pipelines and roads on it to support drilling on the North Shore. To minimize damage to Arctic tundra, oil companies explore for oil on Alaska's North Slope only when roads are frozen with a foot of ice and six inches of snow. The ice-road season has dropped from 200 days a year in 1970 to 103 days in 2002, according to Alaska state documents. "It is unlikely the oil industry can implement successful exploration and development plans with a winter work season consistently less than 120 days," an Alaska Department of Natural Resources budget document said in March. While global warming is hurting oil drilling, it's the increased burning of fossil fuels such as oil that causes global warming. In June, the Department of Energy announced that it would spend $270,000 to help Alaska rewrite its rules about how thick ice roads should be. Permafrost lies under 166 Alaskan towns and 1,700 miles of Alaskan highways. Melting is causing whole chunks of the Alaska Highway to come apart, state officials said at a January global-warming conference. Permafrost is melting "under forests as well as under buildings and roads," said atmospheric scientist Michael MacCracken, who headed federal climate-change studies in the 1990s. So far, the greatest effect on forests has come from the spruce-bark beetle, according to Glenn Juday, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. The beetle, which kills spruce trees, has long lived in Alaska's forests, but normally takes two years to grow and reproduce; cold spells cut their numbers. With global warming, however, the beetles now are damaging as many trees each year as they used to ruin in two, Juday said. More than 4 million acres of spruce - Alaska's predominant tree - have been killed, especially on the Kenai Peninsula. "It's the largest episode of insect-caused tree mortality ever recorded in North America," Juday said. The spruce-bark beetle isn't alone. Other tree-killing invaders made welcome by warmer weather include the larch soft fly, the aspen leaf miner and the birch leaf roller, Juday said. As Alaska's climate gets warmer and drier, Juday's studies indicate, black and white spruces, which make up 80 percent of the state's main forests, won't survive. By the turn of the next century, Alaska's forests will resemble the Aspen-treed grasslands along the northern edge of the Great Plains in North Dakota and Montana, Juday said. Some scientific reports also blame global warming for plummeting herring and salmon populations, Williams said. In the Yukon River, a warm-water parasite has infected salmon and herring, a key food source for marine mammals such as the stellar sea lion. Warm waters have made Alaska's Bristol Bay salmon runs occur earlier than normal, making it harder for the salmon to survive, said Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Slim Morstad. In addition, warm-weather wildlife, such as moose and beaver, are heading unusually far north, while species that require frigid weather "don't have anywhere  to move to," said scientist MacCracken. Marine mammals such as walruses, ring seals and polar bears may soon see their numbers shrink along with the Arctic ice, Weller said. Copyright 2003 Knight-Ridder Newspapers

September 10, 2003 Toll from heat in france now 15,000 Pressure grows for health care reforms by Joseph Coleman the Associated Press PARIS - France's leading undertaker estimated the country's death toll from the summer heat wave at 15,000 on Tuesday , far exceeding the official tally and putting further pressure on the government to improve its health care system. The estimate by the general Funeral Services included deaths from the second half of August, after the record-breaking temperatures of the first half of the month had abated, said company spokeswoman Isabelle Dubois-Costes. The bulk of the victims - many of them elderly - died during the height of the heat wave, which brought suffocating temperatures of up to 104 degrees in the country where air conditioning is rare. Others apparently were greatly weakened during the peak temperatures but did not die until days later. The government at the end of August announced a preliminary death toll of 11,435, but that figure was based only on deaths in the first two weeks of the month. The Health Surveillance Institute, which calculates the official toll for the government, would not comment on the undertaker estimate and said it would release updated figures for August at the end of September. The new estimate came after the government on Monday released a harshly worded report blaming the death son hospital understaffing during summer holidays, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly. The report called on authorities to take bold steps, including the establishment of a  health alert system to prevent a similar disaster. It was still unclear how the government planned to deal with the heat wave's fallout. While the government has been widely criticized for a slow response to the crisis, President Jacques Chirac's center-right government has suffered minimal political damage - thanks in large part to the disarray and lagging popularity of the opposition since Socialist Prime MInister Lionel Jospin fell from power last year. Many blame government Opposition lawmakers were eager to blame the government. "To listen to the government, everybody is responsible, except the government," Olivier Besancenot, a far-left politician who ran for president last year, told RTL radio on Tuesday in reaction to the government report. The most pervasive reaction among the french was shock at the increasing numbers. "There have never been so many deaths in August since the Liberation,' declared the front-page headline in Lemonde's early Wednesday edition, which came out Tuesday afternoon and contained detailed reports on methods of tallying the death toll. General Funeral Services has 25 percent of the funeral market in France, and compiled its tally by estimating the increased number of deaths it handled in August compared with last year, then multiplying the result by four to get an estimate for the whole country. The company was the first to come forward with a death estimate that registered the magnitude of the disaster when it announced in August that some 10,000 had died. The government at that time had put the figure at several thousand at the most. The heat baked many parts of Europe, killing livestock and fanning forest fires, but experts said the heat was more severe in France because temperatures did not drop at night,  meaning those exhausted from the day time heat enjoyed no respite when the sun went down. The high death toll has triggered an angry debate in france over shortcomings of the health system. The government is considering eliminating a national holiday to raise revenues for elderly care. The French lifestyle has also come under scrutiny, since some of the elderly victims died alone in their homes while families were away on long August holidays. Authorities reportedly had difficulties making contact with survivors who were away on vacation.

French heat deaths not over yet August 31, 2003 BY ELAINE GANLEY PARIS--France's health minister said in an interview to be published today that people have not stopped dying from the August heat wave that seared the country, and he predicted that the death toll will climb toward 12,000. But Jean-Francois Mattei resisted calls for his resignation because of what critics say was a slow response to the crisis by the center-right government. ''I have nothing to hide,'' Mattei said in an interview with the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche made available Saturday evening. But Mattei refused to respond to direct criticism while investigations are in progress. On Friday, Mattei announced a provisional death toll of 11,435. ''It is true that we will still have 'deferred' deaths,'' he said in the newspaper interview, ''because organisms rendered fragile have used up all their strength to fight the extreme heat.'' Mattei initially estimated that the heat wave killed 1,500 to 3,000 people. France's largest undertaker later estimated that 10,000 people died. Government officials at first said that could be right but later suggested the number was inflated. Friday's figure came from the Health Surveillance Institute, which calculated the toll for the government. Mattei noted that other studies to determine the heat-related death toll were continuing. For Mattei, the number of deaths was only part of the drama. ''What is also unbearable is the brutal revelation of a social fracture, of the solitude and isolation of the aged,'' he was quoted as saying. ''I'm revolted by these cadavers that no one is claiming.'' Up to 400 bodies remained unclaimed last week in the Paris region, and city officials have said they would be interred in the Square of Indigents at the Thiais Cemetery, to be reburied elsewhere if families claim them. The minister vowed to implement measures to prevent a repeat of the summer catastrophe once conclusions were made by parliamentary and other investigations. ''We must give some sense to these deaths, that this leads us to take all needed measures,'' he said. The measures being floated include scrapping one of France's 11 annual holidays and using those tax receipts to finance health care for the elderly. AP

French heat toll 'could top 5,000' Monday, August 18, 2003 PARIS, France -- The death toll from France's heat wave could be as high as 5,000, according to the country's health minister. Some leftist opposition politicians are demanding Jean-Francois Mattei to resign over the crisis, in which the government did not declare an emergency until a week into a nine-day desert-like weather pattern across France earlier this month. "The figure of 5,000 was mentioned yesterday," Mattei said in an RTL radio interview. "It's one hypothesis. It's plausible but it's just a hypothesis." Over the weekend, Mattei predicted between 1,600 and 3,000 deaths, but a doctors' group had estimated a toll of up to 5,000. Mattei has refused to step down and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has stood by his health minister. In an interview Sunday with the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Raffarin said he was "appalled" by calls by opposition Socialists and Greens for the resignation of his health minister, Jean-Francois Mattei. "All of this is ridiculous. Politics is not a permanent settlement of scores. Faced with such human tragedies, the time is for solidarity, not for sterile polemic," the conservative prime minister said. Victims were mainly elderly people with heat-related conditions. Many were found at home alone as the traditional August holiday exodus leaves city centers deserted. Raffarin cut short his vacation for an emergency meeting last Thursday to tackle the crisis after temperatures topped 40 C (104 F) in parts of the country. The government recalled medical staff from holidays under an emergency plan designed to deal with terrorist attacks, natural disasters or epidemics. Though the weather has cooled, hospitals remain on alert amid fears of a new spike in temperatures. As mortuaries and funeral parlours struggled to cope with an overflow of victims, health authorities took over a disused storeroom at a farmers' market on the outskirts of Paris where several hundred bodies lay awaiting burial. "Is this the result of a war? An earthquake? No, the consequence of the heat wave of the summer of 2003," Le Journal du Dimanche said in an editorial. Socialists have demanded an investigation into the conservative French government's handling of the crisis. -- CNN Correspondent Chris Burns contributed to this report.

Alaska warming is look at future Seth Borenstein Knight Ridder Newspapers Aug. 10, 2003 12:00 AM ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska is melting. Glaciers are receding. Permafrost is thawing. Roads are collapsing. Forests are dying. Villages are being forced to move, and animals are being forced to seek new habitats. What's happening in Alaska is a preview of what people farther south can expect, said Robert Corell, a former top National Science Foundation scientist who heads research for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment team. "If you want to see what will be happening in the rest of the world 25 years from now, just look at what's happening in the Arctic," Corell said. In Alaska, year-round average temperatures have risen 5-degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, and winter temperatures soared 8 degrees in that period, according to the federal government. The entire world is expected to warm 2.5 to 10 degrees by 2100, predict scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change. Last year was the hottest year in Alaska history, and this past winter was the second warmest on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which found that Alaska's temperatures began to rise dramatically in 1976. This July, Anchorage recorded its second-highest temperature ever. Deborah Williams, head of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, used to take visitors from the Lower 48 to the Portage Glacier outside Anchorage, where an $8 million visitor center opened in 1986. By 1993, glacier had receded so much that it no longer could be seen from the center. "Alaska is the melting tip of the iceberg, the panting canary," said Williams, who was the chief Interior Department official for Alaska during the Clinton administration. Portage is "a glacier that's almost out of water; it's thinned dramatically," said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Bruce Molnia, author of Glaciers of Alaska. About 98 percent of Alaska's glaciers are retreating or stagnant, he said. Alaskan glaciers add 13.2 trillion gallons of water to the seas each year, University of Alaska-Fairbanks scientists concluded after a decade of studying glaciers with airborne lasers. The rate of glacier run-off has doubled over just a few decades, they found. Alaska's melting glaciers are the No. 1 reason the oceans are rising, Molnia said. Another frozen staple of Alaska's northernmost lands, permafrost, is also thawing and "is probably the biggest problem on land," said Gunter Weller, director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Permafrost is land that stays frozen year-round. Villages rely on it to prevent beach erosion from violent ocean storms. Two Alaskan native villages, Shishmaref and Kivalina, must relocate because melting permafrost has caused beach erosion, leaving the towns vulnerable to storms. Melting permafrost also means trouble for the oil industry. Oil companies build pipelines and roads on it to support North Shore drilling. To minimize damage to Arctic tundra, oil companies explore for oil on Alaska's North Slope only when roads are frozen with a foot of ice and 6 inches of snow. The ice-road season has dropped from 200 days a year in 1970 to 103 days in 2002, according to state documents. Permafrost lies under 166 Alaskan towns and 1,700 miles of Alaskan highways. Melting is causing chunks of the Alaska Highway to come apart, state officials said at a January global-warming conference. Some scientific reports also blame global warming for plummeting herring and salmon populations, Williams said.

EUROPE'S WEIRD WEATHER WARMS DEBATE By Nicola Jones New Scientist August 5, 2003 http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994022 A scorching heat wave in Europe and a spate of forest fires has re-ignited the debate over whether global warming can be blamed for an apparent increase in the world's weird weather. Scientists agree that no one yet knows the answer to this question, but they point out that an increase in the number and severity of extreme events is exactly what their models of a warmer world predict. "The weather we've seen over the last few days is entirely consistent with what we're likely to see over the next few decades," says John Turnpenny, at the Tyndall Centre for climate change research in Norwich, UK. "We're likely to see such a heat spell in London every year." Extreme weather conditions are affecting all parts of Europe. In the UK, meteorologists predict a fair chance that the country will record 100°F (37.8°C) for the first time this week, beating the previous record of 98.8°F (37.1°C) from August 1990. In Portugal nine people have been killed in the worst wave of forest fires in recent history. Western North America is also facing another bad year for burning forests. In Switzerland, melting ice has contributed to a record number of climbing accidents in the Alps. The heat in Germany has already cost agriculture more than 2002's disastrous floods, while in Spain the price of chickens has soared as the heat reportedly killed more than a million birds. Such weather events fit in well with climate models that predict the effects of global warming driven by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The UK's meteorological office, for example, says the UK is set to get warmer and drier. By 2080 there will be, at worst, 50 per cent less rain than there was in the 1990s. Average summer temperatures are set to rise by up to 3.5 degrees, while temperatures swings will be wilder, with the top 10 per cent of daily highs soaring as much as 7 degrees. Cause and effect But scientists caution that just because extreme weather fits with model predictions, that does not prove that global warming is the cause. "People lump extreme events into one basket and use it to strengthen their arguments about climate change. But you can't do that," says Simon Brown, a climate change expert at the UK's Hadley Centre in Bracknell, Berkshire. "We can't say that one causes the other. We're not at that point yet." In July, the World Meteorological Organization warned that "extreme weather events might increase". But Ken Davidson, director of the World Climate Program and a contributor to the statement, says media reports linking such weather to climate change were overblown. "It certainly isn't clear at this point," he told New Scientist . "We were very careful to use the word 'might'." It is even difficult for researchers to say that there are more extreme events now than there were in the past, because there is no agreed-upon definition for the word "extreme", notes Brown. This makes it hard to compile reliable statistics. Davidson adds that drawing up a list of weird weather events may look impressive, but must be carefully done to be meaningful: "There's always strange weather."

Swiss Alps Crumbling in Heat Wave; Climbers Evacuated, AFP Says July 15, 2003 (Bloomberg) -- A heat wave in Europe is melting Switzerland's glaciers and causing chunks of the Swiss Alps to break off, prompting the evacuation of climbers and hikers, Agence France-Presse reported. In southern Switzerland, helicopters ferried about 70 people from the Matterhorn after a rock face on the 3,400-meter (11,155- foot) peak crumbled, AFP said. A portion of a glacier near the Alpine resort of Grindelwald also broke away and fell into the Luetschine river, causing a surge of water downstream. Police warned people several miles away to stay away from the river, AFP cited the Swiss news agency ATS as saying. Rescue services in Zermatt said no one was injured by the falling rubble, AFP reported. The evacuations were ordered as a precaution because unusually hot weather at high altitude has melted ice that normally binds the rock together, AFP reported. Daytime temperatures in most of Switzerland have stayed above 30 degrees centigrade (86 degrees Fahrenheit) for most of the past five weeks and June was the hottest month on record since weather observations began in 1864, AFP cited the Swiss weather agency, MeteoSuisse, as saying. Temperatures this week exceeded 32 degrees from London to Athens. ---------- RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PHOENIX AZ 900 PM MST MON JUL 14 2003 ...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURES OVER SOUTH CENTRAL ARIZONA AND SOUTH EASTERN CALIFORNIA FOR JULY 14 2003... ARIZONA... CITY HIGH PREVIOUS RECORD HIGH/YEAR BOISE 117 116 IN 1957 BUCKEYE 117 116 IN 1987 CAREFREE 111 110 IN 1970 COOLIDGE 116(TIE) 116 IN 1970 PARKER 121 118 IN 1913 PHOENIX DEER VALLEY 114 113 IN 1970 PHOENIX SKY HARBOR 116 115 IN 1989 WICKENBURG 115(TIE) 115 IN 1998 YOUNGTOWN 115 112 IN 1998 CALIFORNIA... BLYTHE 118 (TIE) 118 IN 1971 IMPERIAL 117 115 IN 1949

Reaping the whirlwind Extreme weather prompts unprecedented global warming alert 03 July 2003 In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire. In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change. The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out). The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately. The extreme weather it documents, such as record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record storms in different parts of the world, is consistent with predictions of global warming. Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere warms, the climate not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples. In southern France, record temperatures were recorded in June, rising above 40C in places - temperatures of 5C to 7C above the average. In Switzerland, it was the hottest June in at least 250 years, environmental historians said. In Geneva, since 29 May, daytime temperatures have not fallen below 25C, making it the hottest June recorded. In the United States, there were 562 May tornadoes, which caused 41 deaths. This set a record for any month. The previous record was 399 in June 1992. In India, this year's pre-monsoon heatwave brought peak temperatures of 45C - 2C to 5C above the norm. At least 1,400 people died in India due to the hot weather. In Sri Lanka, heavy rainfall from Tropical Cyclone 01B exacerbated wet conditions, resulting in flooding and landslides and killing at least 300 people. The infrastructure and economy of south-west Sri Lanka was heavily damaged. A reduction of 20-30 per cent is expected in the output of low-grown tea in the next three months. Last month was also the hottest in England and Wales since 1976, with average temperatures of 16C. The WMO said: "These record extreme events (high temperatures, low temperatures and high rainfall amounts and droughts) all go into calculating the monthly and annual averages, which, for temperatures, have been gradually increasing over the past 100 years. "New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing. "According to recent climate-change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/United Nations Environmental Programme Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global average surface temperature has increased since 1861. Over the 20th century the increase has been around 0.6C. "New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years." While the trend towards warmer temperatures has been uneven over the past century, the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period. Global average land and sea surface temperatures in May 2003 were the second highest since records began in 1880. Considering land temperatures only, last May was the warmest on record. It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001. The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.

Global warming 'threatens Earth with mass extinction' June 20 2003 Global warming over the next century could trigger a catastrophe to rival the worst mass extinction in the history of the planet, scientists have warned. Researchers at Bristol University have discovered that a mere 6 degrees of global warming was enough to wipe out up to 95 per cent of the species which were alive on earth at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago. United Nations scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict up to 6 degrees of warming for the next 100 years if nothing is done about emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, the chief cause of global warming. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/19/1055828440526.html

SPACEDAILY EXPRESS Arctic Sea Ice Could Be Gone By End Of The Century Top chart shows Average Perennial Ice Concentrations from 1990 to 2000 The lower chart represents the decadal average of the concentration of the perennial ice cover during the 2050s as projected from the current data set. This map was developed assuming a linear decline following the decadal change from the 1980s to the 1990s. Credit: J.C. Comiso, NASA/GSFC and Rob Gersten, SSAI. Greenbelt - Nov 29, 2002 A NASA study finds that perennial sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than previously thought -- at a rate of 9 percent per decade. If these melting rates continue for a few more decades, the perennial sea ice will likely disappear entirely within this century, due to rising temperatures and interactions between ice, ocean and the atmosphere that accelerate the melting process. Perennial sea ice floats in the polar oceans and remains at the end of the summer, when the ice cover is at its minimum and seasonal sea ice has melted. This year-round ice averages about 3 meters (9.8 feet) in depth, but can be as thick as 7 meters (23 feet). The study also finds that temperatures in the Arctic are increasing at the rate of 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) per decade. Melting sea ice would not affect sea levels, but it could profoundly impact summer shipping lanes, plankton blooms, ocean circulation systems, and global climate. "If the perennial ice cover, which consists mainly of thick multi-year ice floes, disappears, the entire Arctic Ocean climate and ecology would become very different," said Josefino Comiso, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., who authored the study. Comiso used satellite data to track trends in minimum Arctic sea ice cover and temperature over the Arctic from 1978 to 2000. Since sea ice does not change uniformly in terms of time or space, Comiso sectioned off portions of the Arctic data and carefully analyzed these sections to determine when ice had reached the minimum for that area each year. The results were compiled to obtain overall annual values of perennial sea ice. Prior to the complete data provided by satellites, most records came from sparsely located ocean buoys, weather stations, and research vessels. The rate of decline is expected to accelerate due to positive feedback systems between the ice, oceans and atmosphere. As temperatures in the Arctic rise, the summer ice cover retreats, more solar heat gets absorbed by the ocean, and more ice gets melted by a warmer upper water layer. Warmer water may delay freezing in the fall, leading to a thinner ice cover in the winter and spring, which makes the sea ice more vulnerable to melting in the subsequent summer. Also, the rise in summer ice temperatures by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) each decade could lengthen the summers, allowing earlier spring thaws and later freeze dates in the fall, causing further thinning and retreat of perennial ice. Comparing the differences between Arctic sea ice data from 1979 to 1989 and data from 1990 to 2000, Comiso found the biggest melting occurred in the western area (Beaufort and Chukchi Seas) while considerable losses were also apparent in the eastern region (Siberian, Laptev and Kara Seas). Also, perennial ice actually advanced in relatively small areas near Greenland. In the short term, reduced ice cover would open shipping lanes through the Arctic. Also, massive melts could increase biological productivity, since melt water floats and provides a stable layer conducive to plankton blooms. Also, both regional and global climate would be impacted, since summer sea ice currently reflects sunlight out to space, cooling the planet's surface, and warming the atmosphere. While the latest data came too late to be included in the paper, Comiso recently analyzed the ice cover data up to the present and discovered that this year's perennial ice cover is the least extensive observed during the satellite era. The study appears in the late October issue of Geophysical Research Letters, and was funded by NASA's Cryospheric Sciences Program and the NASA Earth Science Enterprise/ Earth Observing System Project. The mission of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is to develop a scientific understanding of the Earth System and its response to natural or human-induced changes to enable improved prediction capability for climate, weather and natural hazards. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` Arctic Summer Sea Lanes Open By 2015 Forecasts ONR "Although recent terrorist events keep our minds occupied elsewhere in the world, what a navigable Arctic means for our national security is significant," says Dr. Dennis Conlon, Program Manager for Arctic Science at the Office of Naval Research. "Geographical boundaries, politics, and commerce changes would all become issues." Washington - Feb 14, 2002 The Arctic ice cap is shrinking that much is known with certainty. Over the past century, the extent of the winter pack ice in the Nordic Seas has decreased by about 25%. Last winter the Bering Sea was effectively ice-free, which is unprecedented, and if this big melt continues, some say the formerly ice-locked Arctic will have open sea lanes as soon as 2015. By 2050, the summertime ice cap could disappear entirely. "Although recent terrorist events keep our minds occupied elsewhere in the world, what a navigable Arctic means for our national security is significant," says Dr. Dennis Conlon, Program Manager for Arctic Science at the Office of Naval Research. "Geographical boundaries, politics, and commerce changes would all become issues." In April 2001, the Office of Naval Research co-sponsored a meeting of Arctic subject matter experts from the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain in a preliminary attempt to address the capabilities that would be required for naval forces to operate in the Arctic. Their report has just been released, and it speaks to the national and strategic issues surrounding naval ship and aircraft operations in an ice-free Arctic, including policy, doctrine, and possible new systems and ship and aircraft designs. The potential implications of an ice-free Arctic are enormous. Both the Northern Sea Route (north of Russia) and the Northwest Passage (through the Canadian archipelago) provide far shorter routes from Europe to Asia, though both routes are claimed to be through national waters. An increased level of transnational activity might give rise to adversarial action, international criminal and terrorist elements, and environmental challenges. Disappearance of the ice canopy would eliminate a haven now provided to submarines, and the acoustic environment would drastically change. An ecological disruption due to climate and habitat changes would affect marine mammal populations, and this in turn would affect indigenous peoples. One significant conclusion was reached in the report: the U.S. Navy must rely on bilateral and multinational alliances, especially with Canada and Russia, in order to deal effectively and fairly with an ice-free Arctic. Ensuring access and stabilizing the global commons would be the most overriding reason for increased operations in what would remain a very hostile environment, ice or no ice. Naval Ice Center, the Oceanographer of the Navy, and the Arctic Research commission. Related Links

Subj: [SO] Fwd: NASA Study Finds Rapid Changes in Earth's Polar Ice Sheets

Date: 8/30/2002
From: skywatcher22@hotmail.com

Warning, warning, warning...

From: JPLNews@jpl.nasa.gov

Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002

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JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Contact: JPL/Alan Buis (818) 354-0474 August 30, 2002

NASA STUDY FINDS RAPID CHANGES IN EARTH'S POLAR ICE SHEETS

Recent NASA airborne measurements and a new review of space-based measurements of the thickness of Earth's polar ice sheets concludes they are changing much more rapidly than previously believed, with unknown consequences for global sea levels and Earth's climate.

Large sectors of ice in southeast Greenland, the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula are changing rapidly by processes not yet well understood, said researchers Dr. Eric Rignot of  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Robert Thomas of EG&G Services at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. Their study, published this week in the journal Science, reviews progress in measuring changes in ice sheet thickness based upon technical advances and observations made over the past decade.

"Earth's polar ice sheets are changing over relatively short time scales, that is, decades versus thousands of years," Rignot said. Thomas added that today's more precise, widespread measurements tell us rapid changes are common. "These observations run counter to much accepted wisdom about ice sheets, which, lacking modern observational capabilities, was largely based on 'steady-state' assumptions," Thomas said.

"Remote sensing is allowing researchers to look at polar processes on continental scales and in greater detail than before," said Dr. Waleed Abdalati, Cryospheric Program manager, NASA Headquarters, Washington D.C. "Closer examination using even broader advanced remote sensing techniques, including NASA's upcoming Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and Europe's planned Cryosat mission--combined with widespread interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data, ice thickness surveys and ground-based measurements--will enable us to estimate ice sheet mass balance for Greenland and Antarctica even more precisely."

Rignot said understanding how polar ice sheets evolve is vital to society.

"The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets together hold enough ice to raise sea level by 70 meters (230 feet)," he said. "Even a small imbalance between snowfall and discharge of ice and melt water from ice sheets into the ocean could  be a major contributor to the current sea level rise rate of 1.8  millimeters (0.07 inches) a year and impact ocean circulation and climate. During past periods of rapid deglaciation, ice sheet melting raised sea level orders of magnitude faster than today. This is the real threat of the ice sheets."

Rignot and Thomas' review summarizes current progress for two methods of measuring changes in ice sheet thickness: the mass budget method, which compares losses by melting and ice discharge with total net input from snow accumulation; and measuring elevation changes over time. These methods use various space remote sensing resources, such as laser and radar altimetry, the Global Positioning System and InSAR.

The review reports Greenland's ice sheet is losing 50 cubic kilometers (12 cubic miles) of mass a year due to rapid thinning near its coasts. That's enough to raise sea level 0.13 millimeters (0.005 inches) annually. "Rapid coastal thinning cannot be explained by a few warm summers and is attributed to a dynamic ice sheet response," Rignot said. "A possible contributor to the observed trend is increased lubrication from additional surface melt water reaching glacier beds through crevasses and moulins."

Rignot says the mass balance in Antarctica is much harder to calculate because the ice sheet is far larger, more remote and not well covered by existing key satellites. The researchers calculated net ice gains or losses for 33 Antarctic glaciers, including 25 of the 30 largest ice producers.

The West Antarctic ice sheet was found to be thickening in the west, thinning rapidly in the north, and probably losing mass overall by roughly 65 cubic kilometers (roughly 15.5 cubic miles) a year, enough to raise sea level by about 0.16 millimeters (0.006 inches) a year. InSAR observations show several major glaciers that are accelerating and contributing to sea level rise.

Radar altimetry shows ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea Embayment are rapidly thinning, possibly in reaction to a warmer ocean, as suggested by recent oceanographic data. Melting of ice shelf bottoms is far larger than expected here due to intrusion of warm water on the continental shelf, implying a larger interplay of ice and ocean in ice sheet evolution.

Rignot said little is known about the mass balance of Antarctic Peninsula mountain glaciers, which receive a quarter of Antarctica's snow accumulation. The peninsula has warmed 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5.4 degrees  Fahrenheit) over the past 50 years, causing rapid thinning, enhanced melting and rapid disintegration of its ice shelves. The peninsula is a unique laboratory to determine whether retreating ice shelves can induce faster ice sheet flow and raise global sea level, a hypothesis formulated decades ago but still disputed. Recent  results show large glacier acceleration in response to ice shelf collapse. If ice shelves do buttress glaciers, the Antarctic ice sheet's contribution to sea level rise could be much larger in the future than previously believed.

Illustrations related to this study may be viewed at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/antarctica

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

##### 8-30-02 AB #2002-168

Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn and Sag
6-17-02 ANCHOR POINT, Alaska, — To live in Alaska when the average temperature has risen about seven degrees over the last 30 years means learning to cope with a landscape that can sink, catch fire or break apart in the turn of a season. In the village of Shishmaref, on the Chukchi Sea just south of the Arctic Circle, it means high water eating away so many houses and buildings that people will vote next month on moving the entire village inland. In Barrow, the northernmost city in North America, it means coping with mosquitoes in a place where they once were nonexistent, and rescuing hunters trapped on breakaway ice at a time of year when such things once were unheard of. _________________________________________________

From Fairbanks to the north, where wildfires have been burning off and on since mid-May, it means living with hydraulic jacks to keep houses from slouching and buckling on foundations that used to be frozen all year. Permafrost, they say, is no longer permanent. Here on the Kenai Peninsula, a recreation wonderland a few hours' drive from Anchorage, it means living in a four-million-acre spruce forest that has been killed by beetles, the largest loss of trees to insects ever recorded in North America, federal officials say. Government scientists tied the event to rising temperatures, which allow the beetles to reproduce at twice their normal rate. In Alaska, rising temperatures, whether caused by greenhouse gas emissions or nature in a prolonged mood swing, are not a topic of debate or an abstraction. Mean temperatures have risen by 5 degrees in summer and 10 degrees in winter since the 1970's, federal officials say.

Minnesota floods claim 300,000 acres of farmland 6-17-02 Flooding in northwest Minnesota has submerged at least 300,000 acres of cropland, a regional U.S. Department of Agriculture official"We estimate anywhere from about 300,000 to 500,000 acres are currently under water," said John Monson, director of the Minnesota office of the Farm Service Agency, a unit of the USDA. Overall, at least 1.9 million acres of farmland in an eight-county area were affected by excessive rains since last weekend. Crop losses on those acres range from 20 percent to 100 percent, Monson said in an telephone interview. Two of the hardest-hit counties, Norman and Kittson, were among the state's top producers of spring wheat and sugar beets in 1999 and 2000, according to the Minnesota Agricultural Statistics Service. said last week.

_______________________________________________

Satellites Show Alarming Retreat of Glaciers

By SPACE.com Staff
29 May 2002
Satellite Captures Antarctic Ice Shelf's Collapse

Enormous Icebergs Imperil Penguins Heading For Antarctica Breeding Grounds

U.N. Warns Global Warming Is Melting Arctic Soil

Meltdown: Satellites Show Accelerated Polar Ice Threat

Satellite Data Show Shrinkage of Polar Ice Sheet

Satellite imagery being presented today shows that the great majority of the world's glaciers are melting at rates equal to or greater than long-established trends, including some that are receding at alarming and accelerating paces.

If the climate warms at an accelerated rate over the next century, as some scientists predict, the glaciers would be adversely affected, scientists said.

Though most glaciers are receding, the joint study by NASA and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found that a small minority of them are increasing their bulk. Early results of the project are being discussed today by Jeff Kargel, a USGS scientist, at the American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C.

The project, which involves scientists from 23 countries, uses satellites to map and examine glaciers throughout the world during the middle to latter part of the melt season when permanent ice is exposed. Current images are compared with older topographical maps and other records.

"Glaciers in most areas of the world are known to be receding," said Kargel, who heads up the project. "But glaciers in the Himalaya are wasting at alarming and accelerating rates, as indicated by comparisons of satellite and historic data, and as shown by the widespread, rapid growth of lakes on the glacier surfaces."

When ice melts and pools, the melt rate can increase dramatically. While ice reflects the Sun's rays, lake water absorbs and transmits heat more efficiently to the underlying ice, kicking off a feedback that creates further melting.

According to a 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientists estimate that surface temperatures could rise by 1.4°C to 5.8°C by the end of the century. The researchers have found a strong correlation between increasing temperatures and glacier retreat.

Glacier changes in the next 100 years could significantly affect agriculture, water supplies, hydroelectric power, transportation, mining, coastlines, and ecological habitats, the research team predicts. Melting ice may cause both serious problems and, for the short term in some regions, helpful increases in water availability, but all these impacts will change with time, Kargel said.

For example, the Gangotri glacier between Kashmir and Nepal is retreating at an accelerated rate that cannot be accounted for by lingering effects from warming after the little ice age more than 200 years ago. The Gangotri glacier-and many others-feed the Ganges River Basin, upon which hundreds of millions of people, including those in New Delhi and Calcutta, depend for fresh water.

Kargel finds that over one percent of water in the Ganges and Indus Basins (South Asia) is currently due to runoff from wasting of permanent ice from glaciers. This contribution is expected to increase as melting rates accelerate, though ultimately the added runoff is predicted to disappear as glaciers decline many decades from now.

Such changes are important since water use in these basins is already approaching capacity as populations continue to grow, the researchers say. In drier parts of Asia, like in arid Western China, wasting glaciers currently account for over ten percent of fresh water supplies.

But the research finds positive aspects to glacier changes as well.

"It's not all doom and gloom," Kargel said. "Glaciers are wastelands, but as they recede the land underneath may become available for use."

The project primarily draws data from the ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and reflection Radiometer) instrument aboard the NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra spacecraft, launched in December 1999.

From: NASA NEWS

THE OVERALL EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020521/ap_on_re_us/new_iceberg_1

Iceberg Breaks Away From Antarctica

Tue May 21, 6:15 PM ET

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Another new iceberg has broken away from Antarctica, the National Ice Center reported Tuesday.

   The berg named D-17 broke off from the Lazarev Ice Shelf, a large sheet of glacial ice and snow extending from the Antarctic mainland into the southeastern Weddell Sea.

The new iceberg is 34.5 miles long and 6.9 miles wide, about the same size as St. Lucia Island in the Caribbean Sea. It was observed on an image collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

Icebergs are named for the area quadrant of Antarctica where they appear. D-17 is the 17th berg reported since record keeping began in 1976.

Just last week, an iceberg nearly as large as the Chesapeake Bay   called C-19   broke away from Antarctica, where it is late summer.

In March, another giant berg broke free in an adjacent area. Named B-22, it measured 2,120 square miles, bigger than the state of Delaware. Also in March, a large floating ice shelf in Antarctica collapsed.

However, new measurements indicate the ice in parts of Antarctica is thickening, reversing earlier estimates that the sheet was melting.

Scientists reported in January that new flow measurements for the Ross ice streams indicate some of their movement has slowed or halted, allowing the ice to thicken. Researchers don't know if the thickening is merely part of some short-term fluctuation or represents a reversal of the ice's long
retreat.

That report, in the journal Science, came less than a week after a paper in Nature reported that Antarctica's harsh desert valleys   long considered a
bellwether for global climate change   have grown noticeably cooler since the mid-1980s.

The National Ice Center, based in Suitland, Md., provides worldwide ice analyses and tracking to assist the military and private shippers. It is a
joint operation of the Navy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Coast Guard.
___

On the Net: National Ice Center: http://www.natice.noaa.gov

Image of D-17: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/images/iceberg-d17.jpg

New Antarctic iceberg bigger than Delaware May 15, 2002  SUITLAND, Maryland (CNN) -- Satellite images have detected another in a series of massive icebergs calving off the frozen continent of Antarctica, the latest one bigger than the entire state of Delaware.  Dubbed iceberg C-19, the massive, rectangular ice block measures roughly 124 by 20 miles (198 by 32 kilometers), or 2,480 square miles (6,336 square kilometers) in surface area. While not quite the biggest iceberg to break away from Antarctica in recent years, C-19 is about 20 percent larger in area than the state of Delaware.  Last week, another new berg broke free. It was dubbed C-18, and measured roughly 47 by 4.6 miles (75 by 7 kilometers), or just less than 10 times the area of Manhattan.  C-18 and C-19 are adjacent to each other on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, a massive expanse of ice extending out from the continent in the portion of Antarctica that is nearest to New Zealand. National Oceanic and At mospheric Administration monitoring of satellite images from the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program detected the new bergs.  In recent years, a series of increasingly larger icebergs breaking free from the continent have raised concerns that temperatures are on a steady warming trend in the Antarctic region. Such a trend, which many scientists believe may be an early sign of global warming, could have implications for climate changes over much of the planet's surface.  Others have raised concerns that these massive icebergs -- some over 4,000 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) -- could pose hazards to shipping as they drift northward and break up.  NOAA's National Ice Center monitors the locations of these traveling bergs, and in recent years its scientists have located icebergs within 1,000 miles of Cape Town, South Africa, and Christchurch, New Zealand.

Giant Glacier Falls Into Ocean Near New Zealand Last Updated: May 09, 2002 06:12 PM ET By Chris Baltimore WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A huge ice shelf 10 times bigger than Manhattan has plummeted into the sea near New Zealand, U.S. government scientists said on Thursday, adding urgency to warnings that global temperatures are rising for the worse. The news follows the March collapse of the so-called Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica in the Weddell Sea near Chile -- which was the size of a small European country. The collapse on the Ross ice shelf -- in the Ross Sea near the Pacific Ocean and New Zealand -- is about 41 nautical miles long and 4 nautical miles wide. It was spotted by the National Ice Center in Suitland, Maryland, which analyzed infrared photos taken on May 5 by a military satellite. The collapse likely occurred over the last two weeks, a spokesman for the center said. The Ice Center gathers data for the U.S. Department of Defense, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Coast Guard. The collapse is a result of so-called calving, as constant motion by polar ice caps fractures the ice into sometimes-large fragments that float loose into the sea. Green groups pointed to the ice shelf collapses as evidence that emissions of greenhouse gases are causing global temperatures to rise and the polar ice caps to melt. For meteorological reasons, glaciers are one of the first indicators of rising planetary temperatures, said Kalee Kreider, a global warming expert at the National Environmental Trust. "They're a canary in the coal mine for the global warming trend," Kreider said. Carbon emissions from power plants and factories have been linked to global warming, which scientists warn could lead to massive flooding and rising ocean levels. The United States is the world's largest emitter of so-called greenhouse gases.

www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=topnews&StoryID=941443&fromEmail=true#

2002 'warmest for 1,000 years'
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
(Filed: 26/04/2002)

THE first three months of this year were the warmest globally since records began in 1860 and probably for 1,000 years, scientists said yesterday.

Dr Geoff Jenkins, director of the Meteorological Office's Hadley Centre, said the record on land and sea was consistent with computer predictions of the effects of man-made global warming.

The three months were about 0.71C warmer than the average for 1961 to 1990, itself the warmest period for 1,000 years according to ice-core analysis, he added.

The record warm period was the more remarkable because there was no sign of the cyclical El Nino in the tropics, which has attended the succession of record warmest years in the past decade.

The global record comes in the wake of observed changes in the British climate since 1900: a lengthening of the growing season for plants by one month in central England, a temperature increase of 1C, and a 10cm sea level
rise.

Margaret Beckett, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary, said: "In recent years more and more people have accepted that climate change is happening and will affect the lives of our children and grandchildren. I fear we need to start worrying about ourselves as well."

She was speaking at the publication of a report, The UK Climate Impacts Programme, a joint venture between her department, the Hadley Centre, and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East
Anglia.

Scientists, who compiled different scenarios for high, medium and low emissions of greenhouse gases, predicted the following changes in the British climate by 2080:
*    A rise in average temperature of 2-3.5C, probably with greater warming in the south and east. Generally, the climate will be like Normandy, the Loire or Bordeaux, according to the amount of global emissions.
*    Hot days in summer will be more frequent, with some above 40C (104F) in lowland Britain under the high emissions scenario.
*    Summer rainfall will decrease by 50 per cent and winter rainfall increase by 30 per cent under the highest emissions projection.
*    Snowfall will decrease throughout Britain, by 90 per cent in Scotland according to the highest greenhouse gases scenario.
*    Sea levels will rise by 26-86cm (10-34in).
*    The probability of a storm surge regarded as extreme will increase from one in 50 years to nine in 10 years under the high emissions scenario.

A cooling of the British climate over the next 100 years because of changes to the Gulf Stream is now considered unlikely.

Mrs Beckett said some of the predicted impacts were already irreversible, but others could be slowed by international action under the Kyoto climate treaty.

New iceberg breaks free in Antarctica

AMRC ICEBERG DATA

Iceberg Breaks Free From Antarctica

WASHINGTON (AP) - An iceberg larger than Delaware has broken off Antarctica.

The National Ice Center reported Monday that the berg, named B-22- (image), (B-22 image) broke free from an ice tongue in the Amundsen Sea, an area of Antarctica south of the Pacific Ocean.

The new iceberg is located at 74.56 south latitude and 107.55 west longitude.

It is 40 miles wide and 53 miles long, covering 2,130 square miles, slightly more than the 1,982 square mile area of Delaware.

The iceberg was discovered through photographs taken by Defense Meteorological Satellites.

Icebergs are named for the section of Antarctica where they are first sighted. The B designation covers the Amundsen and eastern Ross seas and the 22 indicates it is the 22nd iceberg sighted there by the Ice Center.

The center is a joint operation of the Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Coast Guard.

National Ice Center: www.natice.noaa.gov

Scientists: Bergs not conclusive about global warming

February 8, 2002 

A satellite image, taken Monday, shows the C-17 iceberg off Antarctica.

SUITLAND, Maryland (CNN) -- A rectangular iceberg more than twice the size of New York's island of Manhattan broke free from an Antarctic glacier this week, adding to the already high number of giant icebergs in southern waters.

Dubbed Iceberg C-17, the 58-square-mile berg shook loose from the Matusevich Glacier in the Ross Sea, an area in the part of the continent closest to New Zealand that's largely covered by the Ross Ice Shelf.

Antarctic researchers have noted an increase in the number of massive icebergs calved from the continent in recent years, an indication of warming temperatures.

Many observers have worried that the apparent warming conditions could be an early sign of the impacts of global warming. But in recent weeks, seemingly contradictory announcements have appeared to support claims of both warming and cooling trends.

Scientists involved in the studies, however, say the results say virtually nothing about global warming. Instead, they say, they're indicative of regional conditions -- a possible warming trend in the part of Antarctica that includes the Ross Sea, and a possible cooling trend elsewhere on the continent.

Only long-term, worldwide studies can confirm global warming, its causes and likely effects, scientists say.

Released in recent weeks were:

- A report in the journal Science that chronicled rising temperatures in a series of lakes near Antarctica's Weddell Sea.

- A report in the journal Nature that documented cooling temperatures in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

- A report from the National Science Foundation that found a one-degree Centigrade fall in temperatures since the 1960s in dry valleys near McMurdo Sound.

- A report from meteorologists at the United States' McMurdo Research Station of an unprecedented summer heat wave in early January, including first-ever temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The C-17 iceberg, still close to the Antarctic shoreline, is to be monitored by satellite imaging as it moves and shrinks or breaks up in seawater. The shipping industry has expressed concern that the high number of large bergs in southern waters could eventually pose a navigational hazard.

The National Ice Center, an agency jointly sponsored by several U.S. government scientific and defense entities, currently is monitoring the location of more than 40 massive icebergs near the Antarctic continent; the largest of these is dubbed Iceberg B-15-B. At 1,080 square miles, it's slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. The Ice Center chart places it about 800 miles south of New Zealand.

The most northerly of these giant bergs is A-22-C, roughly 42 square miles in size. It has drifted to a point about 650 miles south of Cape Town, South Africa.

Staggering end to Antarctic ice shelf

U.S., British researchers tie rapid collapse to warming trend

A NASA satellite image shows the thousands of icebergs created by the Larsen B ice shelf collapse. Brownish streaks are rocks and glacial debris exposed from the former underside and interior of the shelf.

March 19, 2002 — A massive Antarctic ice shelf has collapsed into the sea, shattering into thousands of icebergs and alarming researchers by the speed with which the process unfolded. Described by one researcher as “staggering,” the rapid collapse offered fuel for the debate over whether global warming is to blame.

scientist U.S. AND BRITISH government agencies confirmed the collapse of what’s known as the Larsen B ice shelf. Some 1,255 square miles of the ice shelf disintegrated between Jan. 31 and March 7, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Tuesday.

“The shattered ice formed a plume of thousands of icebergs adrift in the Weddell Sea,” the center said, adding that over the past five years, Larsen B lost nearly twice that amount and is now about 40 percent the size of what it used to be.

Before it broke apart, the shelf was 650 feet thick and about the size of Rhode Island.

Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey first predicted in 1998 that it would eventually collapse, and satellite images over the years suggested as much. The process accelerated over the last month, with the single largest piece calving on March 5.

720 BILLION TONS

David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, noted that since the 1998 prediction, “warming on the peninsula has continued and we watched as piece by piece Larsen B has retreated.”

“We knew what was left would collapse eventually,” he said in a statement, “but the speed of it is staggering.” It’s hard to believe, he said, that 720 billion tons “of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month.”

The U.S. center noted that 720 billion tons is enough ice for 290 trillion 5-pound bags.

The British Antarctic Survey said its scientists would be researching when such an event last happened and which ice shelves are threatened in the future. Earlier studies found four other ice shelves had been retreating in recent years.

The researchers emphasized that ice shelves themselves would not raise sea levels because they were already floating in water. However, because shelves hold back ice sheets on the continent, their collapse could allow ice on the ground to slowly move into the sea, thereby raising sea levels over time.

CLOSER TO THE LIMIT’

Ted Scambos, a glaciologist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a statement that the Larsen B collapse “gave us the information we need to reassess the stability of ice shelves around the rest of the Antarctic continent. They are closer to the limit than we thought.”

“Loss of ice shelves surrounding the Antarctic continent could have a major effect on the rate of ice flow off the continent,” Scambos added.

The center, located at the University of Colorado, noted that the next shelf to the south, the Larsen C, “is very near the stability limit, and may start to recede in the coming decade if the warming trend continues.”

“More importantly,” it said, is what might happen with the giant Ross Ice Shelf, the main outlet for several major glaciers draining the West A