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Visitors rush to glimpse vanishing glaciers

Attention turns to Alaska where climate change is transforming the landscape

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian


The four distinguished visitors looked on in awe at the sight before them. Exit Glacier in Alaska's Kenai Fjords national park is one of continental America's most imposing monuments, and last week it was at its most impressive - a hulk of ice and snow imperceptibly making its way toward the sea.

But lately that movement has quickened, a fact that will not have been lost on visitors. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Alaska, Exit Glacier has receded 300 metres (1,000ft) in the past 10 years. The movement means that the viewing platform from which the group of dignitaries surveyed the glacier would have been under several feet of ice just a few years ago. Today it is on dry land.

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Melting glaciers is only one of Alaska's problems. As Kate Troll, an environmentalist writing in the Anchorage Daily News, put it earlier this month: "Besides retreating glaciers, insect infestations and more intense forest fires, Alaska is experiencing melting permafrost, flooded villages, warming oceans, coastal erosion, shifts in bird and wildlife populations, and shorter seasons for ice roads. And there is more to come, as Alaska is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the world."

Last year was the warmest summer on record for much of Alaska. An Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report published in November 2004 said Alaska's average annual temperature rose 3.3C between 1949 and 2003. Some areas have risen twice that much.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,15...

Portugal burning

Sunday, August 21, 2005 Updated at 5:47 PM EDT

Associated Press

Lisbon — Two Canadair water tank planes from France and one from Spain arrived in Portugal on Sunday afternoon to help fight more than 60 wildfires gripping the country from north to south, firefighters said. A third of these were burning in the northern districts of Viseu and Viana do Castelo.

On Monday, one of the Canadian-made water bombers from Italy plus three helicopters from Germany with 25 anti-fire specialists aboard were expected to arrive in the fire stricken country to add to the international task force.

On Saturday Portugal asked the European Union for help in fighting massive wildfires as the Interior ministry admitted it could no longer cope with dozens of blazes burning through forests and farmland without external help.

Portugal's worst drought in years has helped the flames spread. So far, 11 firefighters and four civilians have been killed in this year's fires, while 50 houses have been destroyed.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.2005...

Warming hits 'tipping point'

Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday August 11, 2005
The Guardian

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1546824,00.html