Scientists are suprised at changes in Ward Hunt ice shelf in Arctic
Christopher Dunagan
I haven’t seen much scientific analysis of recent events, but there’s quite a bit of excitement over the continuing breakup of the Ward Hunt ice shelf, the largest remaining ice shelf in the Arctic.
"The map of Canada has changed," declared Derek Mueller of Trent University, who was quoted Friday in a Canadian Press story. See the story and listen as eye-witness observers talk about their findings in a video in the Toronto Star home page.
Mueller, who first discovered the cracking in 2002, said he is amazed at the new splits in the ice, which will never get filled back in. “You can’t go back,” he said.
For other interesting details, see a related story in today’s Toronto Globe and Mail.
For background on Mueller and his discovery, check out this 2004 feature story in NASA’s Earth Observatory publication. It covers many of the broader aspects of climate change and includes this quote from Mark Serreze, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo. At the time, Serreze said he was not sure how much change should be attributed to human activity:
“We know the climate can vary on many different time scales due to natural processes. But when we look at the longer-term record of paleoclimate information, the warming we’re seeing does appear to be very unusual. Carbon dioxide concentrations in ice cores today are probably the highest they’ve been in 400,000 years. There’s a growing consensus between the things we’re observing and climate model projections of change. I’m still a fence-sitter, but I’m leaning more to the side of human causes for at least some of what we’re seeing.”
I don't think Serreze is the same "fence-sitter" he was then. For an ongoing discussion of Arctic conditions by some of the top scientists in the U.S., check out Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis by the NSIDC.
blogs.kitsapsun.com/kitsap/waterways/archive/2008/04/changes_noted_at_ward_hunt_ice.html