After Year 4 Of Record Arctic Sea Ice Loss, NSF Accelerates Research Plan

[hatrack]

Some researchers, such as Ron Lindsay, an Arctic scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, fear that the polar region already may have passed a "tipping point" from which it can't recover in the foreseeable future. Others, such as Jonathan Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson, think the Arctic ice pack is nearing a point of no return but hasn't reached it yet.

The National Science Foundation, a congressionally chartered agency, last month announced an urgent research program to determine what "these changes mean for both the Arctic and the Earth." "The pace of Arctic change has accelerated," the foundation declared. "Because of the Arctic's pivotal role in the Earth's climate, it is critical -- perhaps urgent -- that we understand this system in light of abundant evidence that a set of linked and pervasive changes are under way."

The concern has heightened because last summer brought a record low in the size of the northern ice pack. "The degree of retreat was greater than ever before," said Ted Scambos, chief scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Previous lows were set in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Since 1980, satellite observations taken each September, the warmest month of the year in the Arctic, show that the ice cover has been shrinking by an average of almost 8 percent a year. During that time, the polar ocean lost 540,000 square miles of ice -- an area twice the size of Texas, Scambos said.

As a result, ships were able to sail freely, without the usual aid of an icebreaker, across the northern rim of Siberia last summer. Polar bears and Inuit natives found it harder to hunt and fish on the dwindling ice. In addition to covering a smaller area of the ocean, the remaining ice is getting thinner. Submarine measurements indicate that the central ice pack thinned by 40 percent from the 1960s to the 1990s, Lindsay reported in the November issue of the Journal of Climate.

EDIT

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/living/science/13617128.htm

[bananas]

1. Weren't some web sites censored after Bush took office?

I forgot if it was after he took office or after 911,
there was a big story about an arctic web site that was censored.

edit:
This is the one I was thinking of, http://www.thememoryhole.org/anwr-map.htm
but when I googled "arctic web site censored" I found a lot more,
for example http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010423/allen20010412

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=arctic+web+site+censored&btnG=Google+Search
Results 1 - 10 of about 89,300 for arctic web site censored. (0.22 seconds)
Did you mean: arctic website censored ?