- Jody Bourton
- 28 Jun 06, 05:32 PM
Over the last month or two the Planet Earth Under Threat team has been talking to scientists worldwide, looking for research and 鈥榮tories鈥 to include in our radio series on climate change. Many of the biologists, ecologists, phenologists and other -ologists we鈥檝e approached are more than happy to talk to us about their research and its possible implications. But we鈥檝e also noticed an unexpected reaction in some quarters: a reluctance to discuss the interpretation of data and occasionally an unwillingness to talk to the media at all. What鈥檚 going on?
Continue reading "Message from Jan - Keeping mum on climate change?"
- Jody Bourton
- 22 Jun 06, 10:47 AM
Hi all - just to let you know that weve got a new whizzy addition to the blog with a fli.
For those that dont know a flickr account is like an online photo album and will hold some some pics from our recording of the series. If you have a look on the right hand nav of our blog you can see some of the most recent additions click the link for some more. Well update more in the next few days - enjoy!
- Gabrielle Walker
- 17 Jun 06, 12:05 PM
Hello, Beatrice here - one of the team out in Greenland at the moment. Just wanted to mention a bit about the people living here in East Greenland. We've asked people living here, like Carl in the picture above, if they've noticed the weather changing, ice melting etc and how they feel about it. Carl said he can feel that it's getting warmer - but when we asked him whether this worries him, he said that there are other issues in the community to worry more about at the moment, like the pollution from the open waste dump, social problems, noise pollution from the helicopters coming and going....
Continue reading "Who's Telling Who?"
- Gabrielle Walker
- 16 Jun 06, 09:39 AM
Hello Bloggers,
As Julian has already told you, I鈥檓 here with him in Greenland, studying the signs of Arctic meltback. We鈥檝e seen some of the evidence that the glaciers are retreating, and also we鈥檝e been up close and personal with several floes of sea ice. It can be very tranquil out here in the fjord, surrounded by the beautiful multiyear floes, which are so beaten up by their years of crashing into one another that they look like whipped up meringue. But once in a while you hear a sudden crack like a pistol shot, and watch a large block of ice tumble into the sea. And all around there are the uneven dripping sounds of the Arctic melting.
Melting sea ice is a perfectly natural thing. It happens here every summer, and even now鈥攚hich is quite early for Greenland鈥攕ome of the floes have blue-green ponds of meltwater on their surface. (Incidentally, even though sea ice is just frozen seawater, the older ice spends its first few years letting all the salt trickle out of wiggly channels below the surface, and the topmost part is now more or less salt free. That means the pools of meltwater taste fresh and sweet鈥擨 know, I drank some! Apparently whalers used to use these pools to replenish their water sources, and sometimes to take a chilly dip.)
However, we have also heard worrying evidence that the sea ice is melting more rapidly than before, and that the northernmost ice cap is shrinking. Satellite data show that the summer sea ice has receded by 8 % per year over the past three decades. And some models predict that by the end of the century, the white polar ice cap in summer will be replaced completely by a deep blue ocean.
I鈥檝e just written about Arctic climate change in an article published this week in Nature called 鈥渢he tipping point of the iceberg鈥. Those of you who have a subscription can check it out here:
For the rest, I鈥檒l give a quick summary.
Continue reading "Tipping points"
- Julian Hector
- 14 Jun 06, 06:44 PM
Hello everyone. We've had a certain amount of difficulty logging on, but I'm on-line now sitting over looking the Tasiilaq Fjord in East Greenland. I'm here with Gabrielle and Beatrice to see the Arctic melt back for real. One of the most important discoveries for me here is the nature of ice in all it's Arctic forms. The picture here is us [G & B above] and Norwegian ice expert Ola Johannessen from the Nansen Environmental & Remote Sensing Center in Bergen, Norway.
Continue reading "We're on the Ice!"
- Howard Stableford
- 6 Jun 06, 04:58 PM
While Gabrielle, the world's climatologists and possibly most citizens of the UK accept the general idea that Global Warming is a present day fact, I am not sure the same can be said for my neighbours here in the USA. With the 2008 Presidential elections on the horizon, this feeling may well be why Al Gore is hoping to change the politcal climate here by stepping into the environmental fray with his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" which warns of the imminent dangers of climate changes. I understand the documentary is based on a PowerPoint presentation he's been toting around the world! Clearly it must be about as exciting as "The Da Vinci Code". Yet the doc. has opened to critical acclaim in the liberal hang outs of the Sundance Festival and the artsy theatres of the east and west coasts. But here in the heartland of conservative middle America, it's arrival has been heralded with an eerie silence only punctuated by the toll of the conservative church bell as tumbleweed blows down the real mainstreet USA.
Continue reading "Gore Hopes for US Climate Change"
- Gabrielle Walker
- 4 Jun 06, 10:01 PM
Hello fellow bloggers,
Well, as Julian told you, we made it to Wicken Fen and in spite of his assurances ended up getting more than a little damp. Fortunately, the rain didn鈥檛 come until after the birds had provided us with a splendid dawn chorus. I鈥檝e heard cuckoos before, but never in such numbers, sparring over the airwaves about who has the best patch. It was awesome, well worth getting up at 4am for.
Cuckoos are some of the many migrant birds that Wicken houses, and it was fascinating to hear about how they and their fellow long-distance travellers might be affected by climatic shifts in different parts of their travels.
Speaking of long-distance travels, some of you have mentioned that we on the PEuT team seem to be planning to use up a fair amount of jet fuel to make this series, and have said that this isn鈥檛 exactly environmentally friendly. You鈥檙e right of course. But first of all, I don鈥檛 think you should assume anything about my (or the series鈥) 鈥渁genda鈥. Having spent more than a decade researching and writing about climate change I have now concluded, along with most of the world鈥檚 climate scientists, that global warming is upon us, that some changes are inevitable, and others are probably still avoidable if we decide to take certain steps. I also believe that there will be winners and losers from both the inevitable change, and the possible further changes that might follow.
Continue reading "wet in wicken"
