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Arctic Sea Ice Melting Much Faster, Experts Find
MSNBC News
Monday 30 April 2007
Study indicates that UN reports on warming are too conservative.
Arctic summer sea ice is melting at a significantly faster rate than projected by even the most advanced computer models, according to a new study that concludes recent U.N. reports on warming underestimate the changes in the Arctic.
The shrinking of summertime ice is about 30 years ahead of the climate model projections, researchers with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center report in the online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had used data from the computer models to earlier this year release two reports on the state of Earth's climate. Citing earlier studies, the IPCC estimated that the Arctic could be free of summer sea ice somewhere between 2050 and 2100.
The new study, NSIDC researcher and lead author Julienne Stroeve said in a statement, "suggests that current model projections may in fact provide a conservative estimate of future Arctic change, and that the summer Arctic sea ice may disappear considerably earlier than IPCC projections."
NCAR scientist and co-author Marika Holland added that "while the ice is disappearing faster than the computer models indicate, both observations and the models point in the same direction: the Arctic is losing ice at an increasingly rapid pace and the impact of greenhouse gases is growing."
While computer models are built to look forward, the authors ran them from a 1953 starting point and simulated, on average, a loss in September ice cover of 2.5 percent per decade through 2006.
The researchers then compared that to data taken from recent satellite measurements, as well as aircraft and ship reports, and found that the September ice actually declined at about 7.8 percent per decade.
Several possible factors were cited for the disparity:
- The models assume that half of the ice loss was due to increased greenhouse gases,
but the study indicates those gases might play a significantly larger role.
- Several models overestimate the thickness of the present-day sea ice.
- The models might fail to fully capture changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation that transport heat to polar regions.
A world without summer sea ice won't raise sea levels because that ice is already on water, not land. But it would have a huge impact on polar bears and other wildlife, as well as subsistence hunters. On the other hand, it would also open shorter sea routes, facilitating commerce.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA.
UN chief says climate change as great a threat as war
Fri Mar 2, 6:47 AM ET
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that global warming posed the same threat to humanity as war and warned of an "unconscionable legacy" being left for future generations.
- In a speech to a UN International School Conference, Ban acknowledged that the "majority" of the UN's work still focuses on the prevention and resolution of conflict.
- "But the danger posed by war to all of humanity -- and to our planet -- is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming," he said.
The secretary general highlighted the far-reaching ramifications of global warming and its impact on economic growth, the spread of disease, migration patterns and other changes that "are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict."
Referring to the G8 summit in Germany, Ban stressed that the task of tackling climate change was beyond the capacity of any one nation.
"We are all complicit in the process of global warming ... these issues transcend borders," he said. "Only concerted and coordinated international action, supported and sustained by individual initiative, will be sufficient."
The United Nations is due to hold a conference on climate change in Bali in December.
Earlier this month, UN scientists delivered their starkest warning yet about global warming, saying fossil fuel pollution would raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt polar sea ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come.
In its first assessment in six years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dealt a crippling blow to the shrinking body of opinion that claims higher temperatures in past decades have been driven by natural, not man-made, causes.
The United Nations' paramount scientific authority on global warming highlighted a range of changes that had taken place in Earth's ice cover, rainfall patterns and permafrost and declared that most of the temperature rise over the past 50 years had "very likely" been caused by human activity.
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UN Report on Global Warming Feb 3, 2007
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in
global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global
mean sea level
Published: February 3, 2007**
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Science Panel Calls Global Warming ‘Unequivocal’
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Dan Crosbie/Canadian Ice Service
Polar bears on chunks of glacial ice in the Bering Sea in 2004. Much higher temperatures are forecast for the Arctic, climate scientists say.
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PARIS, Feb. 2 — In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that
global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.
on climate By SETH BORENSTEIN,
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AP Science WriterMon Jan 22 (2007)
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Human-caused global warming is here ...
visible in the air, water and melting ice,
and is destined to get much worse in the future.
"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling."
Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."
The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes "a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate," said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She and other scientists held a telephone briefing on the report Monday.
That report will feature an "explosion of new data" on observations of current global warming, Solomon said.
Solomon and others wouldn't go into specifics about what the report says. They said that the 12-page summary for policymakers will be edited in secret word-by-word by governments officials for several days next week and released to the public on Feb. 2. The rest of that first report from scientists will come out months later.
The full report will be issued in four phases over the year, as was the case with the last IPCC report, issued in 2001.
Global warming is "happening now, it's very obvious," said Mahlman, a former director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab who lives in Boulder, Colo. "When you look at the temperature of the Earth, it's pretty much a no-brainer."
Look for an "iconic statement" — a simple but strong and unequivocal summary — on how global warming is now occurring, said one of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder.
The February report will have "much stronger evidence now of human actions on the change in climate that's taken place," Rajendra K. Pachauri told the AP in November. Pachauri, an Indian climatologist, is the head of the international climate change panel.
An early version of the ever-changing draft report said "observations of coherent warming in the global atmosphere, in the ocean, and in snow and ice now provide stronger joint evidence of warming."
And the early draft adds: "An increasing body of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on other aspects of climate including sea ice, heat waves and other extremes, circulation, storm tracks and precipitation."
The world's global average temperature has risen about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2005. The two warmest years on record for the world were 2005 and 1998. Last year was the hottest year on record for the United States.
The report will draw on already published peer-review science. Some recent scientific studies show that temperatures are the hottest in thousands of years, especially during the last 30 years; ice sheets in Greenland in the past couple years have shown a dramatic melting; and sea levels are rising and doing so at a faster rate in the past decade.
Also, the second part of the international climate panel's report — to be released in April — will for the first time feature a blockbuster chapter on how global warming is already changing health, species, engineering and food production, said NASA scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, author of that chapter.
As confident as scientists are about the global warming effects that they've already documented, they are as gloomy about the future and even hotter weather and higher sea level rises. Predictions for the future of global warming in the report are based on 19 computer models, about twice as many as in the past, Solomon said.
In 2001, the panel said the world's average temperature would increase somewhere between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit and the sea level would rise between 4 and 35 inches by the year 2100. The 2007 report will likely have a smaller range of numbers for both predictions, Pachauri and other scientists said.
The future is bleak, scientists said.
"We have barely started down this path," said chapter co-author Richard Alley of Penn State University.
Plan B 2.0 : rescuing a planet under stress and a civilization in trouble / Lester R. Brown.
Our global economy is outgrowing the capacity of the earth to support it, moving us ever closer to decline and possible collapse. We have lost sight of how vast the human enterprise has become. A century ago, annual growth in the world economy was measured in billions of dollars. Today it is measured in trillions.As a result, we are consuming renewable resources faster than they can regenerate. Forests are shrinking, water tables are falling, and fisheries are declining. We are using up oil at a pace that leaves little time to plan beyond peak oil, and we are discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb them.Sustaining progress now depends on replacing the fossil fuel-based, throwaway economy with a new economy, one powered by abundant sources of wind, solar energy, hydropower, and biofuels. The transportation system will be far more diverse, relying more on light-rail, buses, and bicycles and less on cars. And it will be a comprehensive reuse-recycle economy.We have the technologies needed to build the new economy, including, for example, gas-electric hybrid cars, advanced-design wind turbines, highly efficient refrigerators, and water-efficient irrigation systems. We can see how to build the new economy brick by brick. With each wind farm, rooftop solar panel, and reforestation program, we move closer to an economy that can sustain economic progress.
Global Warming Solutions - Union of Concerned Scientists
We have the technology and ingenuity to reduce the threat of global warming today. Solutions are already available that will stimulate the American economy by creating jobs, saving consumers money, and protecting our national security. By investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency, and increasing the efficiency of the cars we drive, we can take essential steps toward reducing our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels that cause global warming.
Using energy more efficiently and moving to renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, and bioenergy) would significantly reduce our emissions of heat-trapping gases. The United States currently produces 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil, but only two percent from renewable sources. Since the burning of fossil fuels releases large amounts of carbon dioxide—the leading cause of global warming—but renewable energy does not, increasing the share of our electricity generated from renewable resources is one of the most effective ways to reduce global warming emissions.
Cars and trucks are another significant source (25 percent) of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. A serious effort to address global warming must therefore reduce emissions from cars and trucks. Many technologies already exist that can do this, while also creating new jobs in the U.S. automotive sector and other industries throughout the country. In addition, American consumers would save billions of dollars on gasoline, and we would reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
By putting energy efficiency, renewable energy, and vehicle technology solutions in place at the federal level, we can reduce our contribution to global warming while creating a stronger, healthier, and more secure nation.
For more info...see
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/
Global Warming is Here. Now What?
By Don Monkerud
Posted on January 2, 2007, Printed on January 4, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/45981/
The world's economy appears to be robust, but masks an approaching crisis -- the sustainability of future generations "can no longer be taken for granted." That's the opinion of the 1,300 scientists who participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year analysis of the world's ecosystems sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute and reported in Vital Signs 2006-2007.
Examining 24 major ecosystems that support human life, scientists found that 15 are "being pushed beyond their sustainable limits," toward a change that will be "abrupt and potentially irreversible." Humanity's genius at economic development has taxed our ecosystems to the point where we face "imminent ecological and economic crises."
Economically, the world is booming. Steel, aluminum, vehicle production and Gross World Product set records in 2005, as did Internet usage and cell phones. Unfortunately, the production of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the main greenhouse gas, is also booming -- 2004 measured the highest annual increase ever. Average temperatures in 2005 were the hottest ever recorded on the earth's surface, the warmest in 10,000 years.
Warming has led to the destruction of 20 percent of the world's coral reefs and 25 percent of the world's mangrove forests. Sea ice fell to the lowest levels ever recorded and almost a third of the Arctic Ocean, normally covered by ice in the summer, has melted. Weather-related disasters, attributed to global warming, reached a record cost of $204 billion, with record hurricane, forest fire and tornado seasons in the US.
Global warming is here and scientists predict that the number and severity of weather-caused disasters will increase as the earth warms through the heat trapping effects of greenhouse gases created by burning oil, coal and natural gas, which accounts for 80 percent of the world's energy use. With the US consuming roughly a quarter of the world's oil and, along with automobile exhaust, creating almost a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, pressure is mounting to switch to alternative sources of fuel to modify the amount of damage created by global warming in the future.
With the Bush Administration and the oil, gas and automobile conglomerates rejecting scientific findings of man-made global warming, how will the country take action to curb it?
American voters lurch from crisis to crisis, have a short attention span and get their information from a very fad-obsessed media, according to Daniel Press, professor and chair of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Any crisis that requires a change in behavior or tremendous investment, such as global warming requires, will take a major upheaval to affect public policy -- a Pearl Harbor-type event in the environment.
"Unfortunately, we will have many disruptions with extreme climate events, rising sea levels and possibly some cascading collapses in various ecosystems," said Press.
Some states are not waiting for disasters. California recent adopted a global emissions bill, which could spur politicians to provide national leadership on the issue. Despite strong opposition from Republicans, California passed a bill requiring reduction of CO2 by 25 percent by 2020, with enforceable controls.
"California's global warming bill represents a complete break from federal policy and something unheard of in this country," said Press. "If the political stars can align for this to happen in California, moderate Republicans and Democrats could make this happen on the national level."
Businesses are beginning to find economic opportunities in energy efficiency and alternative forms of energy because competition demands it. Japanese cars are surpassing domestic auto companies; Finland uses less energy to produce paper than the US does; and manufacturing sectors around the world are more energy-efficient than the US.
"As energy costs go up, there's money to be made with renewal energy, managing conservation and reducing energy demands," Press said. "As energy costs become a larger part of manufacturing, the winners will be those who conserve energy."
One opportunity involves sequestering carbon, which currently costs $150 a ton, too expensive to be practical. If CO2 can be captured and injected underground, or otherwise prevented from accumulating in the atmosphere, many global warming problems could be alleviated.
"Americans are good at this sort of technological change," said Press. "The whole world is a market for fuel efficiency and renewable energy supplies."
Press advocates many off-the-shelf energy saving technologies that are immediately available such as solar energy, insulation and more fuel-efficient cars. This happened in 1974, when building codes were changed to require home insulation. Developers fought the change, claiming 200,000 Californian homebuyers wouldn't be able to afford the price increase. Instead, consumers appreciated cutting their energy bills in half and housing didn't experience a downturn.
"Transitions are scary, uncertain and possibly expensive, but the arguments for making energy investments are compelling," said Press. "You make money because, over the long run, you're saving energy."
The transition should have been begun 20 years ago: Every delay makes it more difficult.
"I don't think it is impossible for us to make substantial gains in reducing global warming," Press said. "We can't afford a defeatist attitude. We have to be forceful. If we throw up our hands and do nothing, we are accepting the worst-case scenario."
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/45981/
Immense ice shelf breaks off in Canadian Arctic
by Guillaume Lavallee Dec 29, 2006
An enormous ice shelf broke away from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic last year, researchers said, warning it could be another symptom of global warming.
The 66-square-kilometer (25.5-square-mile) ice island tore away from Ellesmere, a huge strip of land in the Canadian Arctic close to Greenland.
The break occurred in August 2005 and was so violent that it caused tremors that were detected by Canadian seismographs 250 kilometers (155 miles) away, but at the time no one was able to pinpoint what had happened.
The Canadian Ice Service contacted geographer Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, who reconstructed the chain of events by piecing together data from the seismic readings and satellite images provided by Canada and the United States.
"This loss is the biggest in 25 years, but it continues the loss that occurred within the last century," Copland told AFP, saying 90 percent of the the ice cover had been lost since the area was discovered in 1906.
"What is important and interesting is that it is sudden, quite large even," he said.
"In the past, we looked to climate change (and) thought perhaps ice shelves ... would just melt apart by losing a little piece day by day, but it now seems that when you reach some kind of threshold, when you reach that level, the whole thing just breaks apart."
Following the discovery, biologist Warwick Vincent of Laval University in Quebec, visited the icy waters of the Arctic to view the "new island."
Vincent said he had seen nothing like it in the past decade. "It really is incredible," Vincent was quoted as saying by the newspaper National Post.
"People talk of endangered animals -- well, these are endangered landscape features, and we are losing them," he said.
Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian Artic research network, said the massive breakoff signaled a rise in Arctic warming.
"This Ellesmere ice shelf was sheltering unique ecosystems on the planet; there are freshwater lakes which were forming above and under the ice shelf," Fortier told AFP.
"The breakup of the ice cover on Ellesmere Island has been going on for 12,000 years, but it seems to have accelerated in recent years which is another indicator, among many others, of warming of the entire Arctic cryosphere," he said, referring to low-temperature elements of weather such as ice and snow.
Canada conducts land, sea and aerial observations of the Arctic ice surface, but often these studies target certain areas and ignore vast, uninhabited areas, the environment ministry says, making satellite images crucial.
The sudden formation of a "new island" in the Arctic "is a symptom among a cluster of symptoms of global warming, the most important evidently being the spectacular redcution in the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice field," Fortier said.
In an article published in December, Canadian and US researchers predicted that by 2040 Arctic Ocean ice will nearly disappear in the summer off the north coast of Greenland and Canada, opening a maritime corridor that would reduce shipping time between Europe and Asia.
Climate Crisis Coalition Newsfeed
www.climatecrisiscoalition.org
Utility Users to Foot Bill for Cleaner Air.
By Elizabeth Douglas, The Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2006. "Customers of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. would be able to voluntarily pay more on their monthly bills to fight greenhouse gas emissions under a program described as the first such arrangement by a U.S. utility. The voluntary program, approved Thursday by the California Public Utilities Commission, would begin in spring and cost an average residential customer about $52 a year. The San Francisco utility would spend the money on tree-planting projects and other ventures aimed at offsetting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in California. The state this year passed a groundbreaking law that would attack global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020."
Judges OK Fast-Track for Texas Coal-Plant Review. By Christy Hoppe, Dallas Morning News, December 15, 2006. "State hearing judges cleared the way Thursday for fast-track consideration of six proposed TXU coal-burning plants, but they also gave a clean-air coalition permission to participate in upcoming state hearings. Environmental groups raised several procedural questions in an attempt to slow the permitting process, which has been accelerated by Gov. Rick Perry's order. But administrative law Judges Kerry Sullivan and Henry Card overrode the issues and set a hearing beginning Feb. 21 on whether to issue the permits."
Private Land Conservation Booms in U.S. By Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 2006. "Each year the U.S. loses about 2 million acres of open space, farms, and forest to development. But now the tables are turning. Rather than see local green space and rugged outdoor areas gobbled up by strip malls or subdivisions, private land owners are increasingly preserving it... Private land set aside for conservation grew 54 percent from 24 million acres to 37 million acres- an area larger than New England - between 2000 and 2005, according to a recent study by the Land Trust Alliance, a Washington-based umbrella group of local, state, and national land conservation groups. National groups such as The Nature Conservancy were key in this push for preservation. But the biggest drivers for growth were volunteer local and state land trusts, whose protected acreage doubled from 6 million acres in 2000 to 11.9 million acres. Meanwhile the rate at which those associations were saving land tripled to 1.2 million acres a year between 2000 and 2005."
Panel Urges U.S. 'Carbon Price' to Fight Warming. Reuters, December 14, 2006. "The United States needs to urgently set a 'carbon price' as the first step in cutting emissions of carbon dioxide contributing to global warming, a panel of environmental and energy experts said on Thursday. Whether in the form of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions or a system of caps as under the Kyoto Protocol, putting a firm monetary value on the greenhouse gas would spur businesses to implement new technologies and energy-saving techniques, the panel said." The panel includes president of New Energy Capital Dan Reicher, Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider, Sierra Club President Carl Pope and Duke Energy Chairman Paul Anderson and Al Gore.
2007 Likely to be Warmest Yet. By Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times, December 15, 2006. "The contiguous United States had its third warmest year since records began in 1880... Blistering summer heat contributed to the worst fire season on record, with more than 9.5 million acres burned through early December. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies said that the Earth’s five warmest years since the late 1880s were, in decreasing order, 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and — if no unexpected fluctuations occur the rest of this month — 2006. James E. Hansen, the director of the Goddard center, said that 2007 was likely to be warmer than this year because one of the periodic hot spells in the tropical Pacific Ocean, called El Niño, has begun and should persist into next spring... For at least 600,000 years before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of carbon dioxide rarely nudged beyond 280 parts per million. It is now 382 parts per million and rising steadily."
Droughts May Set Off Exodus. Peter Gorrie, The Toronto Star, December 15, 2006. "Canada and other wealthy nations should prepare for a flood of environmental refugees, and treat them the same as those who flee political danger, experts say. The number of people fleeing the spread of deserts or climate-change impacts such as drought and flooding is likely to hit 50 million within a decade and soar to between 135 million and 200 million by 2050, Zafar Adeel, a director of the United Nations University, said in an interview yesterday from Frankfurt, Germany while en route to a conference on the issue in Algiers, Algeria."
Critiquing the Stern Report: Recalculating the Costs of Global Climate Change. Commentary by Hal R. Varian, The New York Times, December 14, 2006. "The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change was released Oct. 30 and became front-page news because of its striking conclusion that we should immediately invest 1 percent of world economic activity (referred to as global gross domestic product in the report) to reduce the impact of global warming. The British report warned that failing to do so could risk future economic damages equivalent to a reduction of up to 20 percent in global G.D.P. These figures are substantially higher than earlier estimates of the costs of global warming, and environmental economists have studied the 700-page report to try to figure out why the numbers are so large. Recently two noted economists, William D. Nordhaus of Yale and Sir Partha Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge, have written critiques of the Stern report that try to solve this puzzle. The reports are available at here (Nordhaus) and here (Dasgupta). The two critiques emphasize different but related aspects of the Stern Review’s... choice of the 'social rate of time discount,' the rate used to compare the well-being of future generations to the well-being of those alive today. [Stern sets the social discount rate at 0.1 percent a year, which they both find improbably low.] Is it really ethical to transfer wealth from someone making $7,000 a year today to someone making $94,000 a year in 2200? ... The choice of an appropriate policy toward global warming depends heavily on how one weighs the costs and benefits it imposes on different generations. The Stern Review chose a particular way to do this, but many other choices could have been examined."
Climate Change: It's More than an Environmental Issue and 'It is, in Fact, a Crisis'. By Derek Gentile, The Berkshire Eagle, December 15, 2006. "Like former Vice President Al Gore, Thomas Stokes, coordinator of the Climate Crisis Coalition, believes that the issue of global warming is no longer solely the purview of environmentalists. 'What we're trying to do is expand awareness (of climate change),' said Stokes, who attended Gore's lecture Wednesday night. '(Climate change) is much more than an environmental issue. It is, in fact, a crisis.'... The Climate Crisis Coalition was founded in 2004. The mission, Stokes said, is to build a broad-based coalition that can become an agent for change... Besides urging political leaders nationwide to support the Kyoto agreement, Stokes and his organization are constantly updating their CCC newsfeed. He said he tries to put eight to 10 environmentally related stories on the CCC Web site daily. 'You might think finding eight to 10 stories every day would be difficult,' he said. 'The reality is that there are so many stories about climate change worldwide, it's tough to post only eight to ten.' One of the more encouraging things about the movement is that more and more individuals and organizations are becoming concerned and involved..., Stokes said.
Climate change melts Kilimanjaro's snows
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special CorrespondentSat Dec 16, 1:00 PM ET
Rivers of ice at the Equator — foretold in the 2nd century, found in the 19th — are now melting away in this new century, returning to the realm of lore and fading photographs.
From mile-high Naro Moru, villagers have watched year by year as the great glaciers of Mount Kenya, glinting in the equatorial sun high above them, have retreated into shrunken white stains on the rocky shoulders of the 16,897-foot peak.
Climbing up, "you can hear the water running down beneath Diamond and Darwin," mountain guide Paul Nditiru said, speaking of two of 10 surviving glaciers.
Some 200 miles due south, the storied snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tropical glaciers first seen by disbelieving Europeans in 1848, are vanishing. And to the west, in the heart of equatorial Africa, the ice caps are shrinking fast atop Uganda's Rwenzoris — the "Mountains of the Moon" imagined by ancient Greeks as the source of the Nile River.
The total loss of ice masses ringing Africa's three highest peaks, projected by scientists to happen sometime in the next two to five decades, fits a global pattern playing out in South America's Andes Mountains, in Europe's Alps, in the Himalayas and beyond.
Almost every one of more than 300 large glaciers studied worldwide is in retreat, international glaciologists reported in October in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. This is "essentially a response to post-1970 global warming," they said.
Even such strong evidence may not sway every climate skeptic. Some say it's lower humidity, not higher temperatures, that is depleting Kilimanjaro's snows, for example.
Stefan Hastenrath of the University of Wisconsin, who has climbed, poked, photographed and measured east Africa's glaciers for four decades, says what's happening is complex and needs more study. But on a continent where climatologists say temperatures have risen an average 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century, global warming plays a role, he says.
"The onset of glacier recession in east Africa has causes different from other equatorial regions. It's a complicated sort of affair," he said by telephone from Madison. But "that is not something to be taken as an argument against the global warming notions."
In Kampala, Uganda's capital, veteran meteorologist Abushen Majugu agreed. "There's generally been a constant rise in temperatures. To some degree the reduction of the glaciers must be connected to warming," he said.
It was 10 years ago, on the 100th anniversary of the Italian first expedition to the Rwenzoris, that Majugu and colleagues were struck by an Italian gift to Uganda: photographs from 1896 showing extensive glaciers atop the spectacular, remote, 3-mile-high mountains.
In a scientific paper this May, Majugu and British and Ugandan co-authors reported that this ice, which covered 2.5 square miles a century ago, has diminished to less than a half-square-mile today.
The glaciers are "expected to disappear within the next two decades," they concluded. And because the 2nd century Greeks were right, that means a secondary source of Nile River waters will also disappear.
At Mount Kenya, too, "it's a dying glacier," Hastenrath said, referring to its big Lewis Glacier, once a mile-long tongue of ice draped over a saddle between peaks. "At the rate at which it goes, the end could come soon," he said.
In a meticulous new summary, the Wisconsin scientist, who first investigated Mount Kenya in 1971, shows that its ice fields have shrunk from an estimated 400 acres to less than one-fifth that area in the past century. After decades of work, he concludes a complex of phenomena was responsible.
In the early years, sparser clouds and precipitation in east Africa allowed solar radiation to evaporate exposed areas of ice, which then wasn't adequately replenished, Hastenrath says. But more recently the reduction in ice thickness has been uniform, pointing to general warmth, not limited sun exposure, as the cause. Eight of 18 glaciers are already gone.
"Northey's gone. Gregory's about finished," said John Maina, as if mourning old friends. The 56-year-old guide knows Mount Kenya's glaciers and peaks well, having led climbers up its face since he was a teenager. As he readied for yet another trek from Naro Moru, he recalled how it was.
"We used to be able to ski on Lewis, but now it's all crevasses. We would climb all the way up Lewis on ice to Lenana peak, but now it's climbing on rocks. And the ice is weak. We're seeing blue ice, weak ice."
Up at 10,000 feet, where he mans a weather station in the clouds, another longtime guide, Joseph Mwangi, 45, makes his own projections. "In five years, Lewis Glacier will be gone," he said.
He worries that the water loss may unravel a unique ecosystem that surrounds him — of high-altitude trees and bamboo groves, blue monkeys and giant forest hogs. "The lobelia trees might die," he said.
Animals are already dying in the foothills and plains below.
Glaciologists say "terminal" glaciers often discharge — and waste — large amounts of water in the early years, followed by declining runoff from shrunken ice fields. Villagers here seem to confirm that: The Naro Moru River and other streams off Mount Kenya ran very high some years back, they say, but are now growing thin. A years-long drought magnifies the problem.
"The more the snow goes down, the lower the rivers," said Roy Mwangi, area water officer here.
The trouble has already begun, he said. Miles downstream on the Naro Moru, where the river now vanishes in the dry season, livestock are dying of thirst. Desperate nomadic herdsmen have raided points upriver, blocking intakes for farm irrigation systems, he said.
"There's a lot of suffering on the lower side. These are armed men. I'm afraid there will be conflict," Mwangi said.
Hardships may spread even to Nairobi, Kenya's metropolis. Most of this country's shaky electric grid relies on hydropower, and much of that is drawn from waters streaming off Mount Kenya. In a U.N. study issued in early November, scientists predicted that the glacial rivers of Mount Kenya and the rest of east Africa may dry up in 15 years.
"The repercussions on people living down the slopes will be terrible," said Kenyan environmentalist Grace Akumu.
Scientists say such repercussions would multiply across a world where human settlements have come to depend on steady runoffs from healthy glaciers — in Peru and Bolivia, India and China. And it would extend beyond that, they say, to coastal settlements everywhere, as oceans rise from heat expansion and the melting of land ice.
The October journal report, by European and North American glaciologists, estimates that glacier melt contributed up to one-third of the 1-to-2-inch rise in global sea levels in the past decade. And that contribution is accelerating. Since 2001, they report, dying glaciers apparently have doubled their runoff into the world's rising seas.
OCEANOGRAPHY wikipedia interdependence "Systems Thinking" future thought leadership
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Our planet is invested with two great oceans; one visible, the other invisible;
one underfoot, the other overhead; one entirely envelopes it,
the other covers about two thirds of its surface.
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