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F R E N D Z of martian
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martian
On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Mercedes wrote:
> ---
> F R E N D Z of martian
> ---
> >From the New York Times
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900sci-climate-pole.html
>
>
>
> Ages-Old Polar Icecap Is Melting, Scientists Find
>
> By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
>
> The North Pole is melting.
>
> The thick ice that has for ages
> covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole
> has turned to water, recent visitors
> there reported yesterday. At least for
> the time being, an ice-free patch of
> ocean about a mile wide has opened
> at the very top of the world,
> something that has presumably
> never before been seen by humans
> and is more evidence that global warming may be real and
> already affecting climate.
>
> The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in
> water was more than 50 million years ago.
>
> "It was totally unexpected," said Dr. James J. McCarthy, an
> oceanographer, director of the Museum of Comparative
> Zoology at Harvard University and the co-leader of a group
> working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
> which is sponsored by the United Nations. The panel is
> studying the potential environmental and economic
> consequences of marked climate change.
>
> Dr. McCarthy was a lecturer on a tourist cruise in the Arctic
> aboard a Russian icebreaker earlier this month. On a similar
> cruise six years ago, he recalled, the icebreaker plowed
> through an icecap six to nine feet thick at the North Pole.
>
> This time, ice was generally so thin that sunlight could
> penetrate and support concentrations of plankton growing
> under the ice. Dr. McCarthy said the icebreaker's Russian
> captain, who has made the voyage 10 times in recent years,
> said he had never before encountered open water at the pole.
>
> Another lecturer, Dr. Malcolm C. McKenna, a paleontologist
> at the American Museum of Natural History, said the ship,
> the Yamal, crunched through miles of unusually thin ice and
> intermittent open water on the approach from Spitsbergen,
> Norway, to the pole. When the ship reached the pole --
> which Dr. McKenna and his wife, Priscilla, confirmed with a
> hand-held Global Positioning System Priscilla, confirmed
> with a hand-held Global Positioning System navigation
> device -- water lapped its bow.
>
> "I don't know if anybody in history ever got to 90 degrees
> north to be greeted by water, not ice," Dr. McKenna said in
> an interview. He instantly snapped pictures to document the
> phenomenon in photographs.
>
> The Yamal eventually had to steam six miles away to find
> ice thick enough for the 100 passengers to get out and be
> able to say they had stood on the North Pole, or close to it.
> They saw ivory gulls flying overhead, the first time
> ornithologists said they had ever been sighted at the pole.
>
> Over the last century, the average surface temperature of the
> globe has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, and the rate of
> warming has accelerated in the last quarter century. (That's a
>
> significant amount, considering that the world is only 5 to 9
> degrees warmer now than it was in the last ice age, 18,000
> to 20,000 years ago.) Scientists and policy makers are still
> arguing about whether this is a natural fluctuation or an
> effect of industrial society's releasing heat-trapping gasses
> into the atmosphere.
>
> "Some folks who pooh-pooh global warming might wake up
> if shown that even the pole is beginning to melt at least
> sometimes, as in the Eocene," Dr. McKenna added.
>
> The Eocene was the geological period when the world's
> climate grew significantly warmer. Around 55 million years
> ago, according to sedimentary and fossil evidence, tropical
> vegetation spread inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles.
> Water and jungles dominated the polar environments, and in
> the generally warm world, mammals for the first time grew
> in number, size and diversity.
>
> Previous studies of satellite and submarine observations have
> seemed to establish a warming trend in the northern polar
> region and raise the possibility of a melting icecap.
>
> Scientists at the Goddard Space Science Institute, a NASA
> research center in Manhattan, compared data from
> submarines in the 1950's and 60's with 90's observations,
> demonstrating that the ice cover over the entire Arctic basin
> has thinned by 45 percent. Satellite images have revealed
> that the extent of ice coverage has significantly shrunk in
> recent years.
>
> Dr. McCarthy said he would report the encounter with open
> polar water to environmental scientists and consult other
> scientists to see if new satellite remote-sensing data have
> detected the extent of the melting.
>
> Recalling the reaction of passengers when they saw an
> iceless North Pole, he said: "There was a sense of alarm.
> Global warming was real, and we were seeing its effects for
> the first time that far north."
>
> In their models of climate patterns, scientists have long
> suggested that the northern polar region would be affected
> earlier and more seriously than the southern region.
>
> They said the greater expanse of land in the northern
> hemisphere should respond more rapidly to temperature
> change, presumably leading to marked climate change.
>
>
>
> --
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>
> The archive is at http://www.mail-archive.com/frendz@marsbard.com/
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