Word: icing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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. The project grew...
...Ice, naturally, is central to understanding the Arctic. In the physics of climate change, the ice cover on the water is far more important than the air temperature above it. "Phase change--when there's ice--is really the key," says Rob Macdonald, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans research scientist who studies carbon and contaminant cycling...
...Inuit report the same thing. A hunting, fishing and gathering people, they collect their food from the ice eight months a year. Or at least they try to. The land and sea have become noticeably less predictable in the past five to 10 years, says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. While southern Canadians may bask in unusual winter heat, if ice is too thin to ride over and too thick to take a boat through, it is as if someone closed all the roads to the Inuits' grocery stores. "Ice and snow represent transportation, represent mobility...
...changes in environmental cues--things like ice cover, temperature and salinity--are reflected in other natural events. The growth rates of algae and phytoplankton change. Salmon are migrating to western Arctic waters from the northern Pacific. There is concern that Atlantic cod will encroach in the east and compete with the smaller Arctic cod, which have thrived in frigid climates with their special proteins that prevent freezing of the blood. Meanwhile, the retracting ice makes it harder for ringed seals to find breeding grounds and for polar bears to hunt...
...accumulate in cool Arctic waters and build up in the food chain. Other animals are also in trouble. In February, in what should have been midwinter in the far north, Nunavut's capital city, Iqaluit, was a balmy 5*noneC and rainy. When the temperature dropped, a layer of ice froze over the tundra. Now there's fear that the caribou, which normally dig through snow--not hard ice--to get lichen in winter, will be underfed. So the Inuit can expect a significant change in their diet...