Artic sea ice melting...

[Montpelier Village]

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts
yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be
ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.

Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting
that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving
ice loss.

Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km,
the smallest ever extent in modern times.

Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the
model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets
from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections.

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not
accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher
from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to
the BBC.

"So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013
is already too conservative."

for more see

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm




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TOPIC: 2.5oC temperature increase in 40 years
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/BrSN/browse_thread/thread/b762618f...
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs 13 Dec 2007 02:25
From: Vala


WWF's latest report, Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change, shows that
penguins in Antarctica are under serious pressure from global
warming.

The four populations that breed on the Antarctic continent - emperor,
gentoo, chinstrap and Adélie - are threatened along with albatross and
other wildlife species by climate change and also threats posed by
unsustainable fishing and pollution.

Temperatures in the region have warmed by as much as 2.5°C over the
past 40 years - the largest surface warming on the planet.

For more see

http://www.wwf.org.uk/news/n_0000004611.asp