Warming Accelerating Throughout Arctic Regions Around The Planet

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Rising temperatures are also a concern in the Yamalo-Nenets region in Western Siberia, said Alexandr Navyukhov, 49. He is an ethnic Nenet, a group that lives mostly off hunting, fishing and deer-breeding. “We now have bream in our river, which we didn’t have in the past because that fish is typical of warmer regions,” he said. “On the one hand it may look like good news, but bream are predatory fish that prey upon fish eggs, often of rare kinds of fish.”

Melting permafrost has damaged hundreds of buildings, railway lines, airport runways and gas pipelines in Russia, according to the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental body. Research also shows that populations of turbot, Atlantic cod and snow crab are no longer found in some parts of the Bering Sea, an important fishing zone between Alaska and Russia, and that flooding along the Lena River, one of Siberia’s biggest, has increased with warming temperatures.

In Greenland, Anthon Utuaq, a 68-year-old retired hunter, worries that a warmer climate will make it harder for his son to continue the family trade. “Maybe it will be difficult for him to find the seals,” Utuaq said, resting on a bench in the east coast town of Kulusuk. “They will head north to colder places if it gets warmer.” Arctic sea ice has decreased by about 8 percent, or more than 380,000 square miles, over the past 30 years.

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What is clear is that the average ocean temperature off Greenland’s west coast has risen in recent years — from 38.3 degrees Fahrenheit to 40.6 F — and glaciers have begun to retreat, said Carl Egede Boeggild, a glaciologist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, a government agency. The Sermilik glacier in southern Greenland has retreated nearly seven miles, and the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier near Ilulissat is also shrinking, said Henrik Hoejmark Thomsen of the geological survey. In 1967, satellite imagery measured it moving 4.3 miles per year. In 2003, the rate was 8.1 miles. “What exactly happened, we don’t know. But it appears to be the effect of climate change,” said Hoejmark Thomsen.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9255431/

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1. GOP response...

Scientists say "We don't know!" Global warming is junk science! Drill it all! Flatten the Appalachians!