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ciroccojYou know, one thing that really irritates me about stories like the article below is that the media can - and has to - write about them with such breathless disbelief. Like OMG can you believe it?! The Earth is getting HOTTER!! Just like scientists around the planet have been saying for decades!!! And... and that means that cold things melt!!! And... and... and hot things get hotter!!!! EGAD!!! HOW CAN THIS BE??!! JUST BECAUSE IT'S HAPPENING ALL OVER THE PLANET AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS - YOU MEAN IT'S ALL PART OF A PATTERN???!!!!! OMGWTFBBQ1!11!!
And the reason they have to keep saying it that way is that people in North America really, honestly, and truly believe world-wide climatology is all part of some kind of elaborate hoax. I'm quite convinced that in my grandchildren's time, when most of Africa has been scorched to bare sand, the vast majority of Pacific nations can be found only in history books, and the Rideau Skateway hosts winter skinny-dipping parties in place of Winterlude, the vast majority of North Americans will continue to blithely cling to their mantra of "You can't prove it's all part of a pattern and it has nothing to do with our lifestyle and it's probably just from a volcano and we've just had a couple of unusually warm years that's all and it'll all go back to normal soon and then won't those doomsayers feel silly - here, let's crank up the air conditioning."
Scientists note stunning loss of ice, snow
From elders watching the movement of sea ice in Nunavut to climatologists studying satellite weather maps, people are amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.
Record-warm temperatures have taken their toll on ice cover in Canada's Arctic waters and snow cover on land.
"I've never seen it so wide open this time of year," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, talking about the body of water between Baffin Island and mainland Quebec. "It's just blue, blue as the bluest sky."
It's not just sea ice. Phillips said snow cover is fast disappearing across Nunavut. In Cape Dorset, there is typically 50 centimetres of snow on the ground in May. Now there are just two centimetres. And in Iqaluit, bare ground is exposed everywhere, when typically there is still 20 centimetres of snow cover.
Phillips, a senior climatologist with the federal weather agency, says winter temperatures were four to five degrees warmer than usual. Combined with the dramatic losses recorded in sea ice last summer, Phillips says the natural cycle hasn't had a chance to recover.
"There has been no rebounding back," he said. "The ice just hasn't had a chance to bounce back, to grow during the winter, during the cold season of the year.
"Essentially what's happening is there's been so much warm weather, week after week, month after month, season after season, the environment is just not behaving the way it should."
Ice cover has now dropped to a record low for the winter period.
That worries Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Col.
Serreze said April is generally the month with the maximum ice cover over the Arctic Ocean, and the loss this year is shocking.
"If we compare this April with all previous Aprils, there's hundreds of thousands of square kilometres less ice," he said.
Climatologists, biologists and people living in the area fear the shifting ice patterns are a sign of even deeper changes that will disrupt age-old cycles of plant and animal life, and even global weather patterns.
Serreze says researchers will be watching ice cover data carefully this summer, and many are already predicting the shrinkage in September will largely surpass last year's all-time high.
Serreze says sea ice loss has been the greatest along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
He says this winter a ship could have travelled east from London along Russia's Arctic Ocean coast, through the Bering Strait down to Tokyo.
Meanwhile, Phillips says people in Nunavut and the N.W.T. can expect the balmy weather to continue through the summer.
And the reason they have to keep saying it that way is that people in North America really, honestly, and truly believe world-wide climatology is all part of some kind of elaborate hoax. I'm quite convinced that in my grandchildren's time, when most of Africa has been scorched to bare sand, the vast majority of Pacific nations can be found only in history books, and the Rideau Skateway hosts winter skinny-dipping parties in place of Winterlude, the vast majority of North Americans will continue to blithely cling to their mantra of "You can't prove it's all part of a pattern and it has nothing to do with our lifestyle and it's probably just from a volcano and we've just had a couple of unusually warm years that's all and it'll all go back to normal soon and then won't those doomsayers feel silly - here, let's crank up the air conditioning."
Scientists note stunning loss of ice, snow
From elders watching the movement of sea ice in Nunavut to climatologists studying satellite weather maps, people are amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.
Record-warm temperatures have taken their toll on ice cover in Canada's Arctic waters and snow cover on land.
"I've never seen it so wide open this time of year," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, talking about the body of water between Baffin Island and mainland Quebec. "It's just blue, blue as the bluest sky."
It's not just sea ice. Phillips said snow cover is fast disappearing across Nunavut. In Cape Dorset, there is typically 50 centimetres of snow on the ground in May. Now there are just two centimetres. And in Iqaluit, bare ground is exposed everywhere, when typically there is still 20 centimetres of snow cover.
Phillips, a senior climatologist with the federal weather agency, says winter temperatures were four to five degrees warmer than usual. Combined with the dramatic losses recorded in sea ice last summer, Phillips says the natural cycle hasn't had a chance to recover.
"There has been no rebounding back," he said. "The ice just hasn't had a chance to bounce back, to grow during the winter, during the cold season of the year.
"Essentially what's happening is there's been so much warm weather, week after week, month after month, season after season, the environment is just not behaving the way it should."
Ice cover has now dropped to a record low for the winter period.
That worries Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Col.
Serreze said April is generally the month with the maximum ice cover over the Arctic Ocean, and the loss this year is shocking.
"If we compare this April with all previous Aprils, there's hundreds of thousands of square kilometres less ice," he said.
Climatologists, biologists and people living in the area fear the shifting ice patterns are a sign of even deeper changes that will disrupt age-old cycles of plant and animal life, and even global weather patterns.
Serreze says researchers will be watching ice cover data carefully this summer, and many are already predicting the shrinkage in September will largely surpass last year's all-time high.
Serreze says sea ice loss has been the greatest along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
He says this winter a ship could have travelled east from London along Russia's Arctic Ocean coast, through the Bering Strait down to Tokyo.
Meanwhile, Phillips says people in Nunavut and the N.W.T. can expect the balmy weather to continue through the summer.
