Fast
Arctic Thaw Portends
Global Warming
By Alister Doyle
26 May , 2004 by
Reuters
OSLO - Global
warming is hitting the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of
the planet in what may be a portent of wider, catastrophic changes,
the chairman of an eight-nation study has said.
Inuit hunters are
falling more frequently through the thinning ice with habitats for plants
and animals also disrupted. The icy Hudson Bay in Canada could be uninhabitable
for polar bears within just 20 years.
The melting is also destabilising buildings on permafrost and threatening
an oil pipeline laid across Alaska.
Benefits, for human
commerce, might accrue from the opening up of a now largely icebound
short-cut sea route from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Russia might also
win easier access to oil and gas as the icecap shrinks and permafrost
retreats.
The broader consequences
are however disturbing.
"There is dramatic
climate change happening in the Arctic right now...about 2-3 times the
pace of the whole globe," said Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic
Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), in an 1,800 page report to be handed
to ministers in Iceland in November.
"If you want
to know what the rest of the planet is going to see in next generation,
watch out for the Arctic in the next 5-10 years," he told Reuters
on Monday. The report combines input from scientists, indigenous peoples
and eight Arctic rim nations.
The Arctic reacts
most to global warming, blamed largely on emissions of gases like carbon
dioxide from fossil fuels in cars and factories, partly because dark-coloured
water or earth, once exposed, soaks up heat far faster than white ice
or snow.
Some parts of Alaska
have heated up 10 times more than the global average, said Corell, a
senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society. Future temperature
rises in the Arctic were likely to be twice the 1.4-5.8 Celsius (3-11
F) gain by 2100 forecast by a U.N.-led panel of scientists, he said.
KYOTO?
"I think it
(climate change) can be stopped but we will need an aggressive response,"
Corell said. Global climate change may bring everything from disastrous
floods or droughts to a rise in global sea levels that could swamp low-lying
Pacific islands.
But environmentalists
doubt that governments will decide strong action based on the ACIA report
because the United States has pulled out of the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol,
the main international scheme to tackle climate change.
Russian President
Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he favoured ratifying Kyoto, which
has already been backed by the other six Arctic rim nations -- Canada,
Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Denmark.
"The (ACIA)
report underlines how critical it is that we take action as soon as
possible, first under Kyoto, to reduce emissions and invest in renewable
energy," said Samantha Smith, director of the Arctic Programme
at the WWF environmental group.
Among signs of change
in the Nordic region, birch trees were taking over traditional reindeer
lichen pastures, Corell said. The reindeer had to compete with elk and
red deer moving north.
Corell said that
the sea route between the Pacific and the Atlantic via the Arctic could
open far earlier than expected by most previous studies, cutting shipping
times compared to routes via the Suez or Panama canals.
"On average
our models show that by 2050 the Northern Sea Route will be open about
100 days a year. Now it's open about 20 days," he said.
© Reuters 2004.