Pacific salmon may be dying from leukemia-type virus

WASHINGTON —
In Canada’s Fraser River, a mysterious illness has killed millions of Pacific salmon, and scientists have a new hypothesis about why: The wild salmon are suffering from viral infections similar to those linked to some forms of leukemia and lymphoma.

For 60 years before the early 1990s, an average of nearly 8 million wild salmon returned from the Pacific Ocean to the Fraser River each year to spawn.

Now the salmon industry is in a state of collapse, with mortality rates ranging from 40 percent to 95 percent.

The salmon run has been highly variable: The worst year came in 2009, with 1.5 million salmon, followed by the best year in 2010, with 30 million salmon. But the overall trend is downward.

Losses were particularly high in elevated river temperatures; warmer water makes it more difficult to deliver oxygen to the tissues of salmon.

Seven of the last 10 summers have been the hottest on record for the Fraser River. But experts say it’s too soon to pin the blame on global warming.

“Clearly, a warming climate is going to produce some new stresses for Pacific salmon,” said Daniel Schindler, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Some of those stresses will certainly be expressed through increased susceptibility to disease, including something like this.”

But he added: “The reality is we have very poor understanding of how climate and disease dynamics interact with each other in salmon. We know they’re going to be important, but we can’t say a lot in detail.”

Two years ago, Canada’s prime minister ordered a judicial inquiry - known as the Cohen Commission - to investigate the salmon deaths, with a final report due by June 2012.

Scott Hinch, an investigator at the University of British Columbia’s Pacific salmon ecology and conservation lab and a co-author of a study on the salmon that was published in the journal Science, testified before the panel last month. He told it that the virus could be the biggest factor that’s driving the collapse.

The study raises “a big red flag,” providing scientists with a possible new explanation, said Brian Riddle, the president and chief executive officer of the Pacific Salmon Foundation in Vancouver, British Columbia.

“The critical thing is that for years, people have wondered about the rate of decline and how it can be pretty consistent across most populations in the Fraser,” he said. “This provides a viable reason now. We’re discovering something new. There’s still a lot unknown. We don’t understand the origin of the virus. We don’t understand how it functions.”

He said much more study was needed.

“If this really is a virus and it’s something we don’t understand, then we don’t know how to treat it or control for it,” Riddle said. “So this is something that could linger with us for a long time, and possibly until the animal learns how to deal with it. That will only happen through natural selection-type processes.”

As part of Hinch’s study, salmon were caught, tagged and implanted with radio transmitters and their blood, gill, muscle and fin tissues were biopsied. Scientists then tracked them and discovered that many were stressed and sick before they reached their spawning grounds.

According to the study, ocean-tagged salmon that had the gene signature associated with the viral infection were 13.5 times more likely to die before spawning.

Hinch said the scientists thought that the salmon became infected at sea, before making their runs upriver. He likened it to “dead fish swimming.”

If researchers can confirm the findings that a virus related to leukemia is responsible, “it would be quite novel,” said Hinch.

While there’s no similar research taking place in the United States, Schindler of the University of Washington said there was no reason not to assume that salmon in the nearby Columbia River in Washington state would be suffering, as well.

Glen Spain, the Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, said other issues were at play and that “a cascade of interrelated factors,” not just a virus, could be causing the salmon deaths.

“There are fundamental habitat issues that weaken the salmon when they have too little water in the river or when the water is poor quality, when the population is truncated because of dams and there’s less biological diversity,” he said. “All of those are risk factors for any number of diseases. … It’s sort of like the blind man and the elephant. Everybody thinks that what they’ve got in front of them is the elephant. The reality is that it’s a whole ecosystem.”

He added: “If this is a virus, it’s an endemic virus and it’s been out there for thousands of years. The question is, if it’s attacking fish now, why now?”

Article source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/17/2171716/pacific-salmon-may-be-dying-from.html

American Teens’ Knowledge on Climate Change

Today the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication released a new report entitled “American Teens’ Knowledge of Climate Change” based on a national study of what teens aged 13-17 understand about how the climate system works, and the causes, impacts, and potential solutions to global warming. This research provides an assessment of how much American teens have learned about climate change in and out of school. For comparison, they also report how teens’ knowledge compares with that of American adults. The report is available online here.

Overall, they found that 54 percent of American teens believe that global warming is happening, but many do not understand why. In this assessment, only 6 percent of teens have knowledge equivalent to an A or B, 41 percent would receive a C or D, and 54 percent would get an F. Overall, teens know about the same or less about climate change than adults. The study also found important gaps in knowledge and common misconceptions about climate change and the earth system. These misconceptions lead some teens to doubt that global warming is happening or that human activities are a major contributor, to misunderstand the causes and therefore the solutions, and to be unaware of the risks. Thus many teens lack some of the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about climate change both now and in the future as students, workers, consumers, homeowners, and citizens. For example, only:

• 54% of teens say that global warming is happening, compared to 63% of adults;
• 35% of teens understand that most scientists think global warming is happening, compared to 39% of adults;
• 46% of teens understand that emissions from cars and trucks substantially contribute to global warming, compared to 49% of adults;
• 17-18% have heard of coral bleaching or ocean acidification, compared to 25% of adults.

However, American teens have a better understanding than adults on a few important measures. For example:

• 57% of teens understand that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, compared to 50% of adults;
• 77% of teens understand that the greenhouse effect refers to gases in the atmosphere that trap heat, compared to 66% of adults;
• 52% of teens understand that carbon dioxide traps heat from the Earth’s surface, compared to 45% of adults;
• 71% of teens understand that carbon dioxide is produced by the burning of fossil fuels, compared to 67% of adults.

Meanwhile, like adults, large majorities of teens incorrectly think that the hole in the ozone layer and aerosol spray cans contribute to global warming, leading many to incorrectly conclude that banning aerosol spray cans or stopping rockets from punching holes in the ozone layer are viable solutions. However, many teens, like adults, do understand that switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is an important way to reduce global warming.

Only 29 percent of teens say they have thought “a lot” or “some” about global warming, compared to 52 percent of adults. Likewise, only 19 percent of teens say that global warming is extremely or very important to them personally, compared to 27 percent of adults.

American teens also recognize their limited understanding of the issue. Fewer than 1 in 5 say they are “very well informed” about how the climate system works or the different causes, consequences, or potential solutions to global warming, and only 27 percent say they have learned “a lot” about the issue in school.

Importantly, 70 percent of teens say they would like to know more about global warming. Likewise, 75 percent say that schools should teach our children about climate change. Finally, teens are much more likely than adults to visit zoos, aquariums, natural history, science or technology museums than adults, suggesting that informal education venues are important places for teens (and adults) to learn about complex issues like climate change.

Article source: http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2011/04/18/american-teens-knowledge-on-climate-change/

Greenland Ice Sheet Experiences Record Melt

The Greenland ice sheet, a vast body of ice covering 80% of the country, experienced a record melt in 2010.

The remote island of Greenland is at the coal face of global warming. The Greenland ice sheet makes up around one-twentieth of the worlds ice. In 2010 much of Greenland experienced unusually warm weather, extending the annual melting season by 50 days.

Research published by the City College of New York’s Cryospheric Processes Laboratory shows that since 1979 the area subject to melting in Greenland has been increasing at a rate of 17,000 kilometers square each year. This means that an area the size of France melted in 2010 which would not have melted three decades ago.

The Greenland ice sheets annual melt started exceptionally early in 2010 and extended exceptionally late, lasting from the end of April to mid-September. The studys co-author Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory, explained that this was caused by above-normal near-surface air temperatures.

The teams research was based on satellite data and ground observations, as well as data collected by automated weather stations installed by the Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht in 2003.

If the entire 2,850,000 km3 of the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, global sea levels would rise by a catastrophic 7.2 meters. The 2010 melt beats the previous record set in 2007. Eight of the largest melts on record happened between 1998 and 2010.

2010 was the warmest year on record for Nuuk, Greenlands capital city. It is projected that local warming in Greenland will exceed 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) before the end of this century. Continued warming such as this would see the Greenland ice sheet cross a threshold where long-term melting is inevitable.

These new findings come as the United States grapples with its funding of international climate change initiatives. A recently released budget plan prepared by the Republican Party includes a provision to eliminate all taxpayer subsidies to the United Nationals Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to New York Times environment reporter Andrew C. Revkin, dont look for the vital 21st-century energy quest, let alone a reality-based approach to global warming, to begin within the borders of the United States.

The ice in the Greenland ice sheet is up to 130,000 years old, making it an important record of past climatic conditions. Scientists have been able to drill 4 kilometers deep ice cores, providing an accurate snap shot of global climate changes, ocean volumes and volcanic eruptions.

By area Greenland is the worlds largest island. Its population totals less than 57,000, making it the least densely populated country or dependency in the world.

Article source: http://www.suite101.com/content/greenland-ice-sheet-experiences-record-melt-a336236

Coral spreading northward in Japan as ocean temperatures rise

Corals that inhabit warm ocean areas are spreading northward in Japan’s coastal waters, apparently due to global warming, researchers have announced.

According to a research team from the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Ibaraki Prefecture and the Kushimoto Marine Park Center in Wakayama Prefecture, the northern limits of the habitats of several species of coral lying mostly near the Nansei Islands south of Kyushu have been moving northward at a “unprecedented speed” of up to 14 kilometers per year.

The unusual phenomenon is thought to have been caused by rising sea temperatures associated with global warming. As corals serve as the home for various marine plants and animals, researchers fear a possible change in the regional ecosystem.

In the sea around Japan, average water temperatures in winter have risen by 1.1 to 1.6 degrees Celsius over the past century. Out of nine species of corals that the research team analyzed, four that live in tropical waters have so far spread northward. One of the four species was observed inhabiting the area near Kagoshima Prefecture’s Tanegashima island in 1988, but was found to have spread 280 kilometers northward to Nagasaki Prefecture’s Goto Islands 20 years later.

Article source: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110122p2a00m0na019000c.html

Atlantic currents have seen ‘drastic’ changes: study

(AFP)

GENEVA Scientists have found evidence of a “drastic” shift since the 1970s in north Atlantic Ocean currents that usually influence weather in the northern hemisphere, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday.

The team of biochemists and oceanographers from Switzerland, Canada and the United States detected changes in deep sea Atlantic corals that indicated the declining influence of the cold northern Labrador Current.

They said in the US National Academy of Science journal PNAS that the change “since the early 1970s is largely unique in the context of the last approximately 1,800 years,” and raised the prospect of a direct link with global warming.

The Labrador Current interacts with the warmer Gulfstream from the south.

They in turn have a complex interaction with a climate pattern, the North Atlantic Oscillation, which has a dominant impact on weather in Europe and North America.

Scientists have pointed to a disruption or shifts in the oscillation as an explanation for moist or harsh winters in Europe, or severe summer droughts such as in Russia, in recent years.

One of the five scientists, Carsten Schubert, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Acquatic Sciences and Technology (EAWAG), underlined that for nearly 2,000 years the sub polar Labrador current off northern Canada and Newfoundland was the dominant force.

However that pattern appeared to have only been repeated occasionally in recent decades.

“Now the southern current has taken over, it’s really a drastic change,” Schubert told AFP, pointing to the evidence of the shift towards warmer water in the northwest Atlantic.

The research was based on nitrogen isotope signatures in 700 year old coral reefs on the ocean floor, which feed on sinking organic particles.

While water pushed by the Gulfstream is salty and rich in nutrients, the colder Arctic waters carried by the Labrador current contain fewer nutrients.

Changes could be dated because of the natural growth rings seen in corals.

“The researchers suspect there is a direct connection between the changes in oceanic currents in the North Atlantic and global warming caused by human activities,” said EAWAG in a statement.

Copyright 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

Article source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gTLiYHMTvCUgc976bcTsbW_dJxpg?docId=CNG.88503c7d39403d2c80d23e83925d2832.501

“Ocean Defenders Tour” Greenpeace ship arrives in Taiwan

Taipei, Jan. 2 (CNA) The Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of the Greenpeace environmental protection group, arrived in Keelung Harbor, northern Taiwan, on Sunday, the first port call of its “Ocean Defenders Tour of East Asia.”The crew from 13 countries aboard the vessel were greeted by a traditional drum-beating and lion-dancing performance on shore.

A Greenpeace representative said the visit was aimed at spreading the message of ocean conservation and salvaging depleted marine resources.

He called on governments to support the establishment of an ocean conservation zone to protect the ocean with substantive action and prevent the depletion of ocean resources.

According to the activist, the ocean is facing serious threats, including industrial fishing, pollution and global warming, and he warned that the number of tuna was depleting rapidly and even on the verge of extinction.

During the Greenpeace ship’s month-long journey around Taiwan, it will also dock at Suao, Green Island, Kenting, Siaoliouciou and Kaohsiung harbor, and members of the public will be invited to visit the vessel.

Greenpeace representatives will conduct related research on Taiwan’s ecosystem, especially its coral reefs and green turtle population.

The ship will then head for Hong Kong and South Korea after winding up its visit in Taiwan on Jan. 30.

The trip coincides with the 40th anniversary of the founding of Greenpeace, an independent international organization dedicated to using non-violent and creative confrontations to expose environmental problems and force solutions, according to the Greenpeace website. (By Lin Szu-yu and Lilian Wu) enditem/ls

Article source: http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?ID=201101020019&Type=aSOC

‘Biblical’ flood threatens Australian cities

Updated: Sat Jan. 01 2011 18:45:43

CTV.ca News Staff

Residents of Rockhampton, Australia, joined a growing number of evacuees on Saturday as floodwaters threatened to sink the coastal city as the water spread across the country.

Residents fled rising waters on a dark Saturday night as helicopters dropped off supplies from the now-isolated city.

Days of rain have overflowed riverbeds and flooded an area of Australia larger than France and Germany combined.

“In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions,” Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser told reporters in the flooded city of Bundaberg on Saturday.

So far, around 200,000 people have been affected by the floodwaters as the water spreads and makes its way toward the ocean.

“We’ve never seen flooding like this,” Greg Goebel, director of the Australian Red Cross told CTV News Channel from Brisbane. “There is this tide of water that is simply engulfing a number of towns. In fact, whole towns have been evacuated, some of them at night time.

Residents in Rockhampton, a town of 75,000 that is considered the beef capital of Australia, stocked up on food and supplies on Saturday as officials prepared to evacuate those living in low-lying areas to an evacuation centre.

Goebel said the floodwaters are expected to flow right through the northern Bowen Basin, the second-largest water catchments area in the country.

“The water is going to cut off all road transport and the airport is closed and that is predicted to happen for about three weeks,” he said. “That town has to a very difficult time ahead.”

Rockhampton Mayor Brad Carter told The Associated Press that about 40 per cent of the city could be consumed by the flood, which thousands of homes at risk.

“Some of them will not know whether their floorboards have been covered and their personal property destroyed, or whether they’ve been saved and the water has only come up and spared their property,” Carter said. “That’s going to be a difficult waiting period for many members of our community.”

Earlier in the week, the military was called to clear several towns in the eastern state of Queensland, where now more than half of its 1.8 million square kilometres has been affected by the flood.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has said that some communities could be underwater for more than a week.

Cleanup costs are expected to reach into the billions of dollars.

Goebel said the government’s response to the crisis has been very coordinated and organized so far as it worked with the military and Red Cross to clear the flooded plains.

He said a relief fund is being organized that will go toward paying for the emergency relief and assisting those displaced by the flooding.

“The real issue is that many of them will not get home for days, maybe weeks. We’ve had some people that have really become refugees in this country. They have been uplifted by helicopter, moved to a town hundreds of kilometres away and not likely to get home for some weeks,” Goebel said.

Article source: http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110101/australia-flooding-evacuations-110101/20110101/?hub=CalgaryHome

Believe it or not, climate debate heats up

Climate scientists want us to understand the world is burning, writes Adam Morton.

THE climate scientist Neville Nichols has long believed his role was research, not advocacy. But when he woke on the morning following the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, turned on his TV and caught his breath after witnessing the shocking aerial footage of what was once Marysville, he instinctively blamed himself.

”My initial thought was ‘Is this my fault? Has this happened because I haven’t been out there saying that this stuff is going to have catastrophic consequences for us?”’

”It is the first time I have ever been shaken from my belief that I shouldn’t be an advocate on climate change.”

Nicholls - an Australian Research Council professorial fellow at Monash University and an author and reviewer with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - resolved to take more responsibility to be a public voice; not to lobby for a particular political response, but to explain and defend the science that is his life’s work.

He was not alone. Increasingly, as the first decade of the century unfurled, Australia’s most decorated scientists in climate fields were concerned that published evidence in their areas of expertise was being misused or ignored. Believing they faced a calculated misinformation campaign driven by fossil fuel interests and an intransigent political system, they formed Climate Scientists Australia as a means to improve the quality of public information and decision-making.

The public debate over climate change has yielded its share of controversies, confected and otherwise, but in the eyes of leading scientists the royal commission into the bushfire’s response - which barely mentioned climate change - is emblematic of the biggest of the past 10 years: the failure to convince policymakers and shapers to take the warnings of the world’s most reputable scientific agencies seriously enough to respond effectively.

The global public’s awareness of climate change grew significantly over the decade, but by this year, according to some polls, its acceptance of the science had diminished.

The decline was particularly marked in Britain and the United States. Britain was home to the affair in which senior scientists were accused of manipulating data after ambiguous emails were leaked from the University of East Anglia. The scientists were exonerated of the most serious claims of dishonesty by a series of inquiries, but the damage was done - the findings clearing their names received only a fraction of the media coverage of the initial allegations.

A separate investigation by the InterAcademy Council recommended changes to the IPCC, including greater transparency, but found its work synthesising published climate science was mostly successful.

In the US there was a concerted attack from the resurgent Republican Party and influential parts of the media claiming climate science was a hoax and conspiracy. A University of Maryland study published last month found Fox News viewers were 30 percentage points more likely to incorrectly believe that most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring, or that views are split.

The public mood was not helped by the debacle of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009, which left people with the not unreasonable perception that the world’s leaders had no idea how to tackle the problem. The recent follow-up meeting in Cancun managed to glue the pieces of the broken talks back together, but left the most challenging issues in forging a new treaty to build on the Kyoto Protocol - which covers little more than a quarter of global emissions - to a later date.

Meanwhile, the claims made on climate change’s behalf continued to mount. Delegates in Cancun were handed a report by the aid agency Oxfam that quoted the insurance agency Munich Re. It linked 21,000 deaths in the first nine months of 2010 to climate change. It was twice the number of casualties caused by extreme weather events in all of 2009.

The mid-year floods that soaked a fifth of Pakistan alone killed about 2000 people and affected the lives of 20 million. The same weather system caused extraordinary summer heat in near-Arctic Russia that wiped out crops, caused rampant wildfires and doubled the usual summer death rate for Moscow.

These events rang alarm bells for those familiar with the IPCC’s projection, based on more than 20 climate models that to date have proved remarkably accurate, that a significant temperature rise above pre-industrial levels will increase the likelihood of floods in southern Asia and the risk of heatwaves and wildfires in Europe.

Munich Re reported that its database of natural catastrophes showed that the number of extreme weather events such as windstorms and floods had tripled since 1980 ”and the trend is expected to persist”.

It should be noted that not everyone working in the area is comfortable with linking the present shift in extreme events with greenhouse gases. According to one view, there is little to no change in the proportions of people affected once population growth is factored in.

What does not remain a contested area in the scientific literature is that the planet is becoming hotter. Analysing the data from the world’s three temperature data sets, the World Meteorological Organisation reported in November that the past decade was the warmest since instrumental measurement began in 1850, and 2010 was on track to be the hottest - regardless of the extraordinary snow dumps clogging European and US cities over Christmas.

(In fact, there is significant evidence to suggest that global warming is responsible for the extreme northern winters of the past two years. An increase in air pressure in the Arctic atmosphere caused by warmer heat coming off a relatively ice-free ocean is pushing cold air south.)

Eighteen countries broke their records for the hottest day ever this year. Only one year in the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than any so far in the 21st.

The noughties was the decade of the killer heatwave. Western Europe was hit in August 2003, when extreme heat was estimated to have contributed to the deaths of 46,000. There were widespread crop failures and forest fires, particularly in southern Europe. About a tenth of Portugal’s forests burned.

In Australia, Victoria had never had three consecutive days above 42 degrees until January 2009, when there were three above 43 degrees. The January heatwave is estimated to have killed 500 people in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.

Perhaps the biggest change came in Russia this past northern summer, when at least five days in Moscow topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38C) - a barrier that had never been crossed. An estimated 15,000 people died and the country’s massive grain harvest was devastated by wildfire.

The Russian state weather service chief, Alexander Frolov, said it was the country’s worst heatwave in a millennium. ”Nothing like it can be seen in the archives.”

Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. Last month the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii showed that atmospheric carbon dioxide had reached 390 parts per million - a 40 per cent increase on pre-industrial levels.

All of this is in line with the IPCC’s most recent assessment report, published in 2007, which found that there was at least 90 per cent certainty that most of the increase in the globe’s temperature since mid-last century was due to the rise in industrial greenhouse gases.

There is, of course, still significant uncertainty about the future effect of climate change. But the fundamentals predicted by climate models - marked declines in Arctic sea ice in summer, rising sea levels due to thermal expansion and glacier melt and increases in temperature - are being matched by observations.

That is the science. The response, the politics and economics, remains a thornier question still.

The preferred model under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is carbon trading, under which emissions are capped and pollution permits exchanged so that the cheapest way to meet the target can be found. This method has been adopted in haphazard fashion across Europe, New Zealand and a band of US states, and several more countries including Australia and China are looking at signing up.

There is near universal agreement among economists that a carbon price is the most efficient way to reduce emissions, but carbon trading faces criticism that, while nice in theory, it is ineffective in the real world when it includes poorly policed offset schemes. The US Congress has rejected a national trading scheme; Japan and South Korea have postponed the decision on theirs.

What are the hopes of a global solution to this diabolical problem? A recent prognosis by the Paris International Energy Agency found the national targets submitted under the loose Copenhagen Accord of 2009 would put the world on a path of 3.5 degrees warming by the end of the century. Even if you assume that countries introduce policies to back their international promises - Australia and the US, to name just two, at present have no way of meeting their targets - few scientists or policymakers expect the temperature rise to be kept within two degrees, the goal agreed under the UN process.

In Australia this year there will be a concerted effort from Labor, the Greens and parts of the business world to introduce a carbon price - most likely a tax that could evolve into carbon trading. Attention is then likely to turn to the challenge that has only just begun to find its way into the public debate, but will increasingly become apparent over the next decade: adapting to unavoidable change.

Article source: http://www.smh.com.au/national/believe-it-or-not-climate-debate-heats-up-20101231-19c0d.html

Greenland ice sheet future ‘grim’

29 December 2010
Last updated at 04:18 ET

Dr Alun Hubbard and his team camped about 70 miles (112km) up the ice sheet in Greenland

A glaciologist is warning that the Greenland ice sheet is “retreating and thinning extensively” after a year of record-breaking high temperatures.

Dr Alun Hubbard on Aberystwyth University says its future is “grim” but disputes claims by other experts that it could collapse within 50 years.

He maintains it would be at least 100 to 1,000 years before it “potentially passes any point of no return leading to any widespread collapse”.

Dr Hubbard and his team have been analysing the results of a summer-long expedition.

His team of 15 from Aberystwyth and Swansea universities spent five months on the ice sheet from the beginning of May.

The group camped about 70 miles (112km) up the sheet, and measured the thickness, speed, climate, and other vital statistics using radar, seismic and geophysical equipment.

Large melt lakes form on the Greenland ice sheet

They found rising temperatures had caused extensive melting in new upper parts of the ice sheet in this “very sensitive polar region of the planet”.

This has generated at least double the quantity of melt water, compared with 2009, which runs off the ice sheet into the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

There are fears the melting of the entire sheet could raise sea levels globally by about 7m (20ft), and a study last year found it was losing its mass faster than in previous years.

Dr Hubbard said his expedition had proved enhanced melting was more than just replenishing the oceans, it was now “directly contributing to global sea-level rise”.

He said global warming - at least local Greenland warming - was “worse than ever”.

“This year was another record-breaking year marked by very warm temperatures across Greenland and the Arctic,” he said.

“This warming enhanced and extended melting into new northern and upper parts of the ice sheet generating huge quantities - at least double that compared with the previous year - of melt water which runs off the ice sheet into the ocean.”

Dr Hubbard has spent four years researching the effects of climate change on the country. He has also worked on other glaciers and spent five years working in Antarctica before the Greenland project started.

It’s much like the ice is suddenly aquaplaning or slipping on a banana skin  -Alun Hubbard

The team of scientists and students monitored the build up and drainage of a series of large melt lakes - up to five miles (8km) across - which form on the ice sheet surface during the summer and can drain rapidly to the bed through more than 1000m of ice.

He said the effect of this rapid drainage was to “lubricate and hydraulically lift up” the base of the ice sheet, “overcoming friction with underlying rock”, thereby allowing the sheet to flow much faster.

“It’s much like the ice is suddenly aquaplaning or slipping on a banana skin,” he explained.

“What we observed using methods borrowed from earthquake monitoring, is that the ice sheet slides and accelerates massively when these lakes drain, but the effect is relatively short lived and that the flow does regulate as further melt water drains to the bed.”

His work is part of a wider project involving researchers from Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States.

Dr Hubbard and his team plan to return to the Greenland ice sheet next year to study the effect that reduced winter sea ice has on ice sheet flow and ice berg calving.

Funding for the research has come from the Natural Environment Research Council.

Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-11993455

Melting sea ice blamed for UK Arctic weather

Scientists are claiming melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is the cause of the bitter polar weather causing chaos across Europe.

Recent meteorological reports claim a high pressure area over the Atlantic resulting in the repositioning of the jet stream combined with the influence of La Nina are responsible for the current bleak midwinter. Scientists in Germany, however, are forming a complementary theory, with climate experts at the Potsdam Institute suggesting melting sea ice could be the cause.

The institutes Vladimir Petoukov believes the big freeze is a result of global warming causing sea ice in the Arctic to melt, changing wind patterns across the northern hemisphere and bringing icy blasts of freezing air across the UK. He expects the trend to continue, with Britain shivering in the grip of longer and colder winters.

Petoukov states the disappearing sea ice will have an unpredictable effect on the climate in the northern hemisphere due to a complex and powerful feedback mechanism detected in the Barents-Kara Sea. He adds that colder winters are not disproving the global warming theory, but are supplementing it.

The Arctics floating ice cover is though to have diminished by around 20 per cent in recent years, with temperatures rising at up to three times the global average. As the ice melts, the comparatively warm sea water loses its heat to the atmosphere, causing an area of high pressure to form. This creates clockwise Arctic winds which sweep southwards over northern Europe and the UK.

Although the climate research institute states its too early to link the last two years bitter winters to changes in the Arctic, it believes the theory resulting from the research is strong. and predicts freezing winters will continue for around 50 years, after which warmer winter conditions will develop.

Article source: http://news.carrentals.co.uk/melting-sea-ice-blamed-for-uk-arctic-weather-34230354.html

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