Report says Arctic rapidly warming

By The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times

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WASHINGTON — Scientists say changes in the Earth's climate from human influences are occurring intensely in the Arctic region, evidenced by widespread melting of glaciers, thinning sea ice and rising permafrost temperatures.

A study released yesterday said the annual average amount of sea ice in the Arctic has decreased by about 8 percent in the past 30 years, resulting in the loss of 386,100 square miles of sea ice — an area bigger than Texas and Arizona combined. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment was a four-year study by 300 scientists in eight nations bordering the Arctic, including the United States.

"The bottom line is that the Arctic is warming now, much more rapidly than the rest of the globe, and it's impacting people directly," said Robert Corell, chairman of the scientists' study panel and a senior fellow with the American Meteorological Society.

Large sections of the report deal with problems faced by indigenous Arctic people, who tell of hunters falling through melting sea ice, declining reindeer herds and difficulty traveling in roadless regions with no snow for their snowmobiles and sleds.

Some coastal villages are jeopardized by erosion and rising seawater.

In more developed areas of the Arctic, buildings, pipelines, runways and roads are beginning to crumble as the permafrost beneath them thaws and becomes less stable.

Among the most obvious changes are the melting of the massive Greenland ice cap and other Arctic glaciers and the decimation of northern forests by foreign insect invasions.

And the process is only likely to accelerate, the study finds. That would wreak havoc on polar bears, ice-dependent seals, caribou and reindeer herds.

Some endangered migratory birds are projected to lose more than half their breeding areas.

Many environmental groups hailed the report and said it was an urgent call for the United States, which has been reluctant to agree to international limits on greenhouse-gas production, to join the efforts of other nations.
 
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said the "dire consequences" of warming in the Arctic underscore the need for their proposal to require U.S. cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases. President Bush has rejected that approach.

In the past 50 years, average yearly temperatures in Alaska and Siberia rose between 3.6 degrees and 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, and winters in Alaska and western Canada warmed an average of between 5 degrees and 7 degrees Fahrenheit.

With "some of the most rapid and severe climate change on Earth," the Arctic regions' melting contributed to sea levels rising globally by an average of about 3 inches in the past 20 years, said the report, which was based on ice-core samples and other evidence of climate conditions such as on-the-ground and satellite measurements of surface air temperatures.

Scientists have long puzzled over how much of the Arctic warming can be blamed on human influence and how much is linked to natural climate cycles.

For decades, an oceanic and atmospheric pattern known as the Arctic oscillation has been stuck in a phase that increases warming over parts of the Arctic.

In recent years, however, the pattern has shifted to a more neutral state, "yet the Arctic is still warming, and we're still losing sea ice," said Mark Serreze, a researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

"This is one of the pieces of evidence that we're starting to see more clearly the effects of greenhouse warming," he said.

The study projects that in the next 100 years the yearly average temperatures will increase by 7 to 13 degrees Fahrenheit over land and 13 to 18 degrees over the ocean, mainly because the water absorbs more heat.