Search:   Spelling

Also Try Arctic Circle Materials Map of the Arctic Circle (BugBog.com) Provides a map with the Arctic Circle clearly marked. 10-04 News -07-29-08 Giant Chunks Break Off Canadian Ice Shelf (MSNBC News) "Giant sheets of ice totaling almost eight square miles broke off an ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic last week and more could follow later this year, scientists said on Tuesday." "In a development consistent with climate change theories, the enormous icy plain broke free sometime last week and began slowly drifting into the Arctic Ocean. The piece had been a part of the shelf for 3,000 years." "Many scientists now believe that the Arctic will have ice-free summers by 2013 instead of 2030 as predicted by the International Panel on Climate Change." 07-08 Ice Masses Monitor Lost (BBC News) "The European Space Agency has confirmed that its ice mission Cryosat has been lost off the Russian coast." "The satellite fell into the Arctic Ocean minutes after lift-off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia." "The £90m (135m euro) craft was designed to monitor how the Earth's ice masses are responding to climate change." "Scientists, calling it a 'tragedy', said it would be years before they could launch a similar mission, even if more funding were available." 9-05 Polar Caps Melting Fast (Time.com) "The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame." 08-06 Papers -Editorial: Polar Ice Caps Threatened (Awesome Library) "Our greatest challenge today is to move the fresh, melting water in our polar caps and Greenland to safe land basins and water tables." 06-06 Arctic Is Melting Fast (National Geographic) " 'The Arctic is the early warning for the rest of the world,' said Sheila Watt-Cloutier of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. 'What happens to the planet happens first in the Arctic. Protect the Arctic and we save the planet. … We must all take what action we can to slow the pace of climate change, while there is still time.' " 06-06 Arctic Ocean (Wikipedia.org) "The Arctic Ocean, located entirely in the north polar region, is the smallest of the world's five oceans (after the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Southern Ocean), and the shallowest." 10-04 Freshwater in the Polar Ice Caps (Hypertextbook.com) "Ice caps are found in several places in the Arctic region (Greenland, Iceland, Baffin Island, and the island of Spitsbergen) and over most of the Antarctic region. Approximately 90% of the ice on earth, is found either in Greenland or in Antarctica. The largest ice caps on the planet are found there. Greenland is a plateau surrounded by mountains. Antarctica is composed of mountains, valleys, and lowlands. From my research, I have found different values for the volume of the polar ice caps. For Antarctica, the approximate volume is 30,000,000 km3. For Greenland, it is approximately 3,000,000 km3." "The volume of the polar ice caps is very important, because it may provide answers to future problems regarding the earth's fresh water. In the future, fresh water in the other six continents might be depleted. Since ice caps contain over 80% of the earth's fresh water, they could be used in the future to provide fresh water for earth's growing population." 07-07 Global Warming May Trigger a Very, Very Long Warming (International Herald Tribune) "The Arctic, particularly, is filled with what amount to flippable climate switches, including natural repositories of carbon, like boggy tundra, that could emit vast amounts of greenhouse gases should the current warming trend pass certain points, said Jonathan Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona." "This could amplify warming and take the climate into a realm beyond anything experienced through human evolution." 12-05 Is It Too Late to Stop Global Warming? (ABC News) "A prime example: decayed vegetation in the Arctic, which contains massive amounts of carbon, used to be protected by the perpetual cold. As the climate warms — sped along by human beings burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide — scientists say the vegetation will dry out and break down, releasing even more carbon dioxide." " 'Humans are putting about 6 or 7 billion metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere a year, and we're standing on 200 billion tons here," says [biologist Walter] Oechel. 'Any significant portion comes out, that's worse than current human injection into the atmosphere. And once that runaway release occurs, there would be no way to stop it.' " 03-06 Permafrost Disappearing (Scientific American) "The top 11 feet of soil in the Arctic continues to thaw. Sinkholes are opening, highways buckling, houses and forests tilting, all of which is wreaking havoc on landscapes, wildlife and cities from Murmansk to Juneau. This permafrost layer--defined as soil that remains icy cold for more than two years--covers nearly a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere. But that total is shrinking and new models show that it may nearly disappear by the end of this century." "Even more troubling, this permafrost layer contains anywhere from 20 to 60 percent of the carbon trapped in soils in the world." 12-05 Polar Ice Caps and Rising Ocean Levels (HowStuffWorks.com) "The main ice covered landmass is Antarctica at the South Pole, with about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). Antarctica is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing." "At the other end of the world, the North Pole, the ice is not nearly as thick as at the South Pole. The ice floats on the Arctic Ocean. If it melted sea levels would not be affected." "There is a significant amount of ice covering Greenland, which would add another 7 meters (20 feet) to the oceans if it melted. Because Greenland is closer to the equator than Antarctica, the temperatures there are higher, so the ice is more likely to melt." 07-07 Scientists: Arctic Ice Loss Triggering Global Warming (BBC News) " 'September 2005 will set a new record minimum in the amount of Arctic sea ice cover,' said Mark Serreze, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Boulder, Colorado.' " "The current rate of shrinkage they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060." " 'These dark areas absorb a lot of the Sun's energy, much more than the ice, and what happens then is that the oceans start to warm up, and it becomes very difficult for ice to form during the following autumn and winter.' " " 'It looks like this is exactly what we're seeing - a positive feedback effect, a "tipping-point".' " "The idea behind tipping-points is that at some stage the rate of global warming would accelerate, as rising temperatures break down natural restraints or trigger environmental changes which release further amounts of greenhouse gases." "The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a four-year study involving hundreds of scientists, projected an additional temperature rise of 4-7C by 2100." 9-05 Study: Arctic Was Once Tropical (Washington Times) "First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show." "Millions of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming. But about 55 million years ago there was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect." "Scientists already knew this 'thermal event' happened but are not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, numerous volcanic eruptions." 05-06 Thermohaline Conveyor Currents (GRID-Arendal) "The global conveyor belt thermohaline circulation is driven primarily by the formation and sinking of deep water (from around 1500m to the Antarctic bottom water overlying the bottom of the ocean) in the Norwegian Sea. This circulation is thought to be responsible for the large flow of upper ocean water from the tropical Pacific to the Indian Ocean through the Indonesian Archipelogo. The two counteracting forcings operating in the North Atlantic control the conveyor belt circulation: (1) the thermal forcing (high-latitude cooling and the low-latitude heating) which drives a polar southward flow; and (2) haline forcing (net high-latitude freshwater gain and low-latitude evaporation) which moves in the opposite direction. In today's Atlantic the thermal forcing dominates, hence, the flow of upper current from south to north." Provides a global chart of the flow of the currents. "When the strength of the haline forcing increases due to excess precipitation, runoff, or ice melt the conveyor belt will weaken or even shut down." 01-06 Warmest Arctic in 400 Years (ABC News) "This season has ushered in the warmest Arctic summer in 400 years. A NASA report to be released this week finds the polar ice pack has shrunk by nearly 30 percent since 1978, and new satellite photos show the melting is speeding up." 9-05 Water on the Earth (UMAC - OCP) Describes availability of water on the Earth, including Water Planet, Physical Symptoms of Water Stress, Hydrologic Cycle, and World's Water Supply. "Of all the water on Earth, more than 97% is salt water held in the oceans. The remaining 3% constitutes the fresh water supply on the planet. The majority of fresh water is held in ice (glaciers and polar ice caps) and a large proportion also lies too far underground to be exploitable. The amount of fresh water directly available is less than 1% of the total water in the Earth System." 4-02 Worldwide Sea-Level Rise Expected (USA Today) "At the current rate of rising temperatures, by the year 2100 Arctic summers could be as warm as they were 130,000 years ago. Back then, in a time known as the last interglacial, the oceans were 20 feet higher than they are now." "That does not mean the researchers are predicting a 20-foot ocean rise by the end of this century; more like a couple of feet, they think. But such a warming is expected to accelerate melting of the polar ice and could lead to considerable additional sea-level rise, they said." 03-06

Italian, Russian, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean,   Index, New, Search Engines, Dictionary, Bookstore, Licenses, Email Us, About Us, Link to Us, or Privacy Policy.