GLOBAL WARMING

The Arctic is a highly sensitive region, and it's being profoundly affected by the changing climate. Many scientists believe that global warming is the cause. Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world. Satellite photos have shown that the Artic region is shrinking in size since the 1970's (Global Warming: The Silent Threat). In the last two decades, temperatures have been rising in the Arctic at a rate 20 times faster than the warming that occurred over the previous century, and the thickness of the ice sheet has decreased by about half (down from 15 feet in the 1980s to 8 feet in 2003). Springs are coming earlier, and fall is arriving later, which combined with higher summer temperatures year after year contribute to the gradual shrinking of the permanent ice sheet (Cox 14).

Climate scientists since the mid 1970's have predicted that warming would come first and strongest in the Arctic after 1995. The change has been increasingly evident, both to scientists and to indigenous people. In Alaska and western Canada, winter temperatures have gone up as much as 7 degrees F over the past 50 years. Since the mid 1970's, the floating Arctic ice pack has lost an area the size of Texas and Arizona combined. With a shorter season of sea ice, fall storms batter Alaska's Arctic coast as never before, causing erosion that threatens communities (Wohlforth 9). Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing. For example, the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3,000 years before it started cracking in 2000. Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces (Global Warming: The Silent Threat).

How can a few degrees change the world? A warming of 1.1ºF over the past century and a further 2.5-10.4ºF over the 21st century, as projected by IPCC, may appear minor compared to short-term weather changes from night to day and winter to summer. However, in global climate terms, a warming at this rate would be much larger and faster than any of the climatic changes over the past 10,000 years. Global temperatures during the last ice age (about 20,000 years ago) was 9°F cooler than today, but that was enough to allow massive ice sheets to reach as far south as the Great Lakes and New York City (Armageddon to Come).

Rising temperatures are already affecting Alaska, where the spruce bark beetle is breeding faster in the warmer weather. These pests now sneak in an extra generation each year. From 1993 to 2003, they chewed up 3.4 million acres of Alaskan forest. The effects of global warming on the north are not limited to the Arctic. Higher temperatures are already affecting people, wildlife and landscapes across Alaska. Melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets also contribute to rising sea levels, threatening low-lying areas around the globe with beach erosion, coastal flooding, and contamination of freshwater ...