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It looks as though global warming will cut short a study of… global warming.

MVK International Exhibition Company

That’s what happens when your lab sits on a melting ice floe. Adrift on ice in the Arctic Ocean, 21 Russian scientists (and two dogs) will need an early rescue thanks to global warming. The ice chunk supporting North Pole-35—a project designed to study Arctic flora and fauna, environmental conditions and even geography—has dwindled from 3 square miles to just 0.7 square miles.

That's still 2 million square feet, but it brings the floe's edge too close to the expedition's huts and equipment for comfort. So instead of abandoning the floe in September, as planned, scientists will climb aboard a research vessel towed by the nuclear ice-breaker Arktika in coming days. Just when depends on ice conditions, of course.

North Pole-35 is the 35th time Russian scientists have floated across the Arctic since 1937. On previous missions, they’ve helped define Russia's claims to Arctic territory, including the rich oil deposits believed to lie beneath the northernmost ocean. The current expedition started in September 2007, and most last at least a year.

The early rescue is yet another sign that the Arctic sea ice is rapidly disappearing. It worries climate scientists because the impacts of the North Pole melting are unknown. They could include changes in the amount of rainfall and snow across the northern hemisphere. Still, it is of a piece with U.S. ice experts’ predictions that the Arctic could be ice-free as early as September of this year— a situation unknown in recorded human history—thanks to an early start to the melting season and a record retreat last year that left weaker ice in its wake. Russian scientists’ ability to go with the floe in future may be in doubt.

"The observed rates of change have far outstripped what we projected," senior research scientist Mark Serreze of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center told me last year. "We seem to melt a little more each summer."

4 Comments

1. 1. khl 06:31 PM 7/14/08

   Scientists are not predicting an "ice free Arctic" this year. Recent media coverage made much of a prediction that the North Pole could be ice free this year, but that speculation referred only to the North Pole, not the entire Arctic.

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2. 2. mikermoon 11:57 AM 7/15/08

   Why is there so little debate about the reality of global warming? How can everyone be so sure? There is absolutely no proof, none, zip.
   
   Is global warming real or hype? The ocean mass is over 750 times that of the atmoshpere, and we have no idea of the latent heat contained in the ocean. The flux between the ocean and the atmosphere is poorly understood to say the least, with dozens of supercomputers worldwide dedicated to running the latest "climate models." If heat flows out of the ocean into the atmosphere, the atmosphere gets warmer. This effect dominates anything CO2 could possible do, particularly as CO2 is far less than a tenth of a percent of the atmosphere, and can only absorb heat when the ground is warmer than the air, usually a temperature difference of only a few degrees.
   
   Somebody with a lot of money needs to measure the latent heat of the oceans, and determine whether global warming exists, and if so whether it is caused by greenhouse gases. This would involve temperature measurement at many different locations and depths, repeated many many times. Until then, global warming is and will remain a mystery.
   
   The Earth has heated up and cooled down many many times in its history. Right now the climate is still 3.19 degrees C cooler than it was 233,000 years ago according to the Rostok ice core. We are still in the normal range, in other words.
   
   Michael Moon
   Chicago, IL, where we had one nasty cold winter this year...

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3. 3. Douglas in Phily in reply to mikermoon 10:46 PM 7/16/08

   There is plenty of evidence which means more than a little proof that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases. You have here another flaky theory. The theory that global warming is being caused by greenhouse gases has been around for almost 40 years. It has nothing to do with the global cooling theory which was briefly around and discarded 30 years ago. It has been verified again and again by thousands of climatologists and scientists. It is the only theory to have this kind of support in the scientific community. If things don't change soon it will be hotter than it was 233,000 years ago in less than 100 years.
   The consensus is in...
   Get over it...
   Being a Global Warming skeptic is kind of like being a a skeptic of Newtonian Physics.
   

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4. 4. Jean-Paul Turcaud Exploration Geologist 05:54 PM 7/19/08

   Sirs,
   
   Thanks for bringing us this new story again about the reality of Global Warming
   
   Unfortunately this is not cyclic as some optimistic people wish to believe, we are on a non-return trip and as the True Geology establishes each planet is born in turn from its mother star ( a dark star in all cases although the illusion of the contrary) and drifts then on the Ecliptics plane until it reach its biological range... this is where we are now and the Global Warming is accelerating that drift as the analogy of a warm balloon in atmosphere illustrates. The more you heat that balloon the faster it rises... okay ? ... and this is what is happening right now on that world of ours.
   
   A proof amongst thousands : the tangential speed of meteorological vortex are consistantly on the increase and this due indeed to stronger De Coriolis forces resulting from Earth accelerated rotation in phase indeed with a longer year. Tornadoes reaching 600 km/h and cyclones matching the 350 km/h on Australia Eastern seaboard. Also consistant with the whole phenomena and indeed as collateral damages the pressure of fresh water in aquifers is continuously falling with all water tables down there at their lowest since such monitoring took place a century back. & the whole Murray-Darling Basin ( Australia bread basket the size of France and Germany ) turning itself into a Desert
   
   No need to blind people with false hopes, since only the strongest decisions will be able only to slow down the process but not to invert it indeed.
   
   Regards from down under.
   
   Jean-Paul Turcaud
   AustralIa Mining PIoneer
   Discoverer of Telfer, Nifty & Kintyre Mines in the Great Sandy Desert of Australia
   Exploration Geologist & Offshore Consultant
   Founder of the True Geology
   Cell phone + 33 6 50 17 14 64
   Bus phone + 33 5 16 19 14 54
   
   ~~~Ignorance is the cosmic sin, the one never forgiven ~~

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