“Earth's tropical belt is expanding much faster than expected,
and that could bring more storms to the temperate zone and drier weather
to parts of the world that are already dry, climate scientists reported
on Sunday.
“Remarkably, the tropics appear to have already expanded -- during
only the last few decades of the 20th century -- by at least the same
margin as models predict for this century," the scientists said
in the current edition of Nature Geoscience.”
—
“Tropical temperatures are warm, and it rains a lot, with little
seasonal or day-to-day change. The subtropics, by contrast, are generally
dry. If the warm, wet tropical climate is spreading poleward, the dry
subtropic climate may head for the poles too.
“Those dry subtropical bands could include some of the most heavily
populated places on Earth, the scientists said: the Mediterranean, the
US Southwest, northern Mexico, southern Australia, southern Africa and
parts of South America.”
—
“Those storm tracks are linked with the position of the jet stream,
which is one way we use to delineate the width of the tropics,"
Seidel said by telephone from NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory outside
Washington. "The jet streams are moving poleward, and so, presumably,
would the storm tracks.”
And from the recent past:
“A thought came to me, when I was reading in the papers about
the scandals of the regional government: scientists say the palm tree
line, that is the climate favorable to the palm tree form of vegetation,
is creeping northward at the rate, I think, of five hundred meters every
year . It's rising like mercury in a thermometer.”
Sciascia, 1961.
water
pressure in the western usa, and shrinking glaciers
“One of the United States' most beautiful landmarks may soon
have to change its name. Glacier National Park in Montana, which once
boasted 150 of the spectacular rivers of ice, is now down to 25, and
the most recent data show that the remainder "may be gone in our
lifetimes," an ecologist said here yesterday at a meeting of the
American Geophysical Union. Other than the aesthetic loss, the disappearance
of glaciers across the American West could cause huge problems for a
regional population that is 85% dependent on mountain water and already
coping with shortages.”
—
“ [...] The latest surveys conducted by the organization show
that the glaciers are, on average, 1.7 meters thinner each year--a decline
much more rapid than expected [...] ”
—
“ [...] Also contributing is carbon black, known more commonly
as soot, which continually rains down on the glaciers but tends to concentrate
on the surface of the ice. By the calculations of his research team,
Painter said, soot increases heat absorption from the sun's rays by
43%. That provides "yet another reason" to limit carbon black
from industrial emissions, [...] ” [Quoted from sciencenow.sciencemag.org]
“Since 1950, the Sierra snowpack has decreased by about 20 percent,
the temperature in the Rocky Mountains has gone up 3 degrees and spring
water flow in the Columbia River has decreased significantly.
“ "These signals are the same no matter where you go in
the West," marine physicist Tim Barnett of Scripps Institution
of Oceanography said Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical
Union in San Francisco. "We've got a real serious problem."
“By scaling down global climate models to bring greater detail
of the region, a team of scientists led by Barnett and atmospheric scientist
Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory projected these
trends into the future and found a grim picture for the West. By about
2040, the Colorado Rockies will be nearly barren of snow as early as
April 1 each year. And a similar story will play out in the Sierra.”
[Quoted from mercurynews.com]
“ "About 50 percent of the fresh water consumed by people
worldwide comes from mountains, so the rate at which snowpack is disappearing
is worrying, said Daniel Fagre, an ecologist who works for the US Geological
Survey in Glacier National Park in Montana.
“Fagre said only about 25 of 150 glaciers that once dotted Glacier
National Park remain. Initial data projected that, for the first time
in more than 1,000 years, the park would be without ice floes by 2030,
but more recent estimates project the icebergs may be lost even before
then, Fagre said.
“ "The glaciers of Glacier National Park will be gone in
our lifetimes," Fagre said, [...] ” [Quoted from planetark.org]
and in iceland:
“ "It's nice to have plants around, but well, it's not
good. It gets better in Iceland, but the rest of the world sees the
bad part," she says.
“Once the measuring tape is rolled up, Jonsson heads back to
his truck. He checks a clipboard to figure out exactly how far the glacier
has retreated: 41 meters, the largest retreat he has ever seen. That's
almost half the length of a football field in a single year.
This isn't happy news for Solveig Thorvaldsdottir.
“ "I mean, what are we going to call our country when the ice all
melts? We might as well call it lava land," she says.” [Quoted
from npr.org]
and in china:
“High altitude glaciers in China's remote west have shrunk by
up to 18 percent over the last five years due to global warming, state
media said on Friday, citing preliminary results from an on-going survey.”
—
"Global warming has led to an increase in the average temperature
in the western area of China over the past few decades. This has caused
the glacial shrinking, a thawing of frozen earth and worsening arid
conditions,[...] ” [Quoted from planetark.org]
For
more detailed information.
growing
melting in greenland
“Scientist Ian Joughin says that in the past few years, Jakobshavn's
speed has doubled.
“ "That's putting about twice as much ice into the fjord
as a decade ago ... and twice as much into the ocean," he says.”
—
“The station has to be re-anchored into the ice because Greenland's
entire ice sheet is moving. Joughin, from the University of Washington,
pulls out his GPS unit and finds that the region has slid more than
100 yards closer to the ocean during the past year.
“He also measures a length of fishing line he had sunk straight
down into the ice the previous summer to see how much of the ice has
melted away. A lot of the line he had buried is lying on the surface.
“ "Wow," he says. "It's a meter and a half of
melt since last year. … Almost five feet."
“Greenland's ice sheet deforms constantly, like pancake batter
flowing on a griddle. Each year, more snow piles up in the middle, and
each year, more ice slides off into the sea or melts away. At the moment,
Greenland's melt water increases global sea level by about a quarter
of an inch per decade. If that melt increases as the world warms, a
melting Greenland will eventually eat away the shorelines of the world.”
related material
the
melting of glaciers
global warming
Arctic melting ice, sea
levels
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