Word: arctics
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...predicting local effects of global change. But a massive new Canadian research project, ArcticNet, may provide some early answers about the connections among warming, melting, ecosystem reorganization and human response. And the results may be the best indicator the world will get about what to expect elsewhere. The Arctic will show the earliest and most severe signs of global warming--with Canadian calculations predicting a rise in mean temperature of more than 4 degrees Celsius between the late 20th century and the mid-21st...
...ArcticNet, the biggest Arctic research project ever undertaken, calls on more than 100 Canadian researchers from 27 universities and five federal departments to study just about everything in the Canadian Arctic that could be changed by global warming. "It's interesting, but pretty useless, to say the Arctic may have a three-month, ice-free summer, if you don't also look at what the impact will be on the people and industry in the north," says Louis Fortier, scientific director of the Networks of Centres of Excellence project, launched in 2004 and due to run at least seven years...
...soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2. That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientist David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils? Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons to 800 gigatons. The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year...
...salt concentration drops, and the water gets lighter, idling on top and stalling the current. Last December, researchers associated with Britain's National Oceanography Center reported that one component of the system that drives the Gulf Stream has slowed about 30% since 1957. It's the increased release of Arctic and Greenland meltwater that appears to be causing the problem, introducing a gush of freshwater that's overwhelming the natural cycle. In a global-warming world, it's unlikely that any amount of cooling that resulted from this would be sufficient to support glaciers, but it could make things awfully...
...BREASTED GOOSE Twenty-six bird species, including this goose, which breeds in the Arctic, are listed by the World Conservation Union as threatened by global warming. Half are seabirds whose food supplies are diminished because of climate changes. The rest are terrestrial species, including several whose coastal habitats are at risk because of rising sea levels...