Arctic of old is gone, experts warn

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39779522/ns/us_news-environment/

updated 2 hours 25 minutes ago 2010-10-21T18:38:03

The Arctic — an area described as Earth's refrigerator because its ice helps keep temperatures cool — continues to warm up and is unlikely to return to earlier conditions, according to an annual report card issued Thursday by top scientists.

Record temperatures across the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, a reduced summer sea ice cover, (and) record snow cover decreases" were cited as factors supporting the conclusion in the 2010 Arctic Report Card issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The report card "tells a story of widespread, continued and even dramatic effects of a warming Arctic," lead researcher Jackie Richter-Menge, an expert at the federal Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab in Hanover, N.H., told reporters.

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Past report cards have also cited warming trends, the scientists acknowledged, but this last year has seen several anomalies: record temperatures in Greenland; a 110-square-mile piece of ice that broke off Greenland's Petermann Glacier ; and a 2009-2010 winter that saw a blast of Arctic winds that went north-south instead of west-east — causing a deep freeze across the Northeast and Midwest.

That latter event, which had been registered only three times in 160 years of records, "looks like it's connecting to the warming and ice loss in the Arctic," said Jim Overland, a NOAA scientist responsible for the report card's section on atmosphere.

"Normally we think of winds bottled up in the Arctic," he said, but now a north-south shift might become more common.

"As we lose more sea ice it's a paradox that warming in the atmosphere can create more of these winter storms," he added.

In Greenland, the warmth has meant accelerated flow of melt water from glaciers into the ocean, said Jason Box, a glaciologist at Ohio State University. As a result, he added, "sea level projections will need to be revised upward."


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