About
Academics
Multisport
Photography
Writing
Home

 

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Global Climate Change

Report Sounds Alarm on Pace of Arctic Climate Change
Warmth, Glacial Melt Linked to Humans; Wide-Ranging Effect on Environment and Industry Forecast

By Juliet Eilperin and Rick Weiss
(Washington Post, 31 Oct 2004)

The most comprehensive international assessment of Arctic climate change has concluded that Earth's upper latitudes are experiencing unprecedented increases in temperature, glacial melting and weather pattern changes, with most of those changes attributable to the human generation of greenhouse gases from automobiles, power plants and other sources.

[...]

The findings, which reflect four years of study, confirm earlier evidence that the Arctic is warming far more quickly than the earth overall, with temperature increases in some northern regions exceeding by tenfold the average 1 degree Fahrenheit increase experienced on Earth in the past 100 years.

[...]

"Climate change is not something that's going to happen -- it is happening all over the Arctic," Palsson said. "The Arctic is sort of a bellwether" for the rest of the earth.

[...]

The report's authors believe Arctic temperatures will rise several degrees in the coming decades, according to a summary prepared by Gunn-Britt Retter, a technical adviser with the council's Indigenous People's Secretariat. Winters are expected to become warmer, and wet periods in the Arctic are expected to become longer, more frequent or both.

full story