Playing both ends...

Global climate change is causing dramatic shifts in polar regions. Indeed, the Arctic is seeming the most dramatic climate-induced changes on the planet. An article in the September 10 Salon said that, compared to the worldwide average of 1 degree warming, global warming

has heated the Arctic by nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Since the mid-1950s, Alaska's glaciers have lost about 3,300 cubic kilometers of melted ice and snow - enough to submerge the entire state of Texas in 15 feet of water. Due in part to this influx of fresh water combined with warmer temperature, computer models predict that the Arctic Ocean's sea ice could completely disappear within 70 years. ...

Already, native communities that dot Alaskan shorelines are seeing villages crumble. Waves, unhindered by large ice chunks, now swell and break against the shore with a ferocity never seen before. Banks are eroding and high water has consumed so many homes and buildings that two villages have been forced to move inland.

It's not only the villagers that are affected, as Reuters pointed out on September 6.

Ideal for an Ice Age, white fur used as camouflage by animals from polar bears to Arctic foxes may be going out of fashion because of global warming.

Adding to the disruption of habitats, rising temperatures may simply make white animals too obvious if melting ice and snow exposes tracts of dark, bare ground.

If whiteness no longer means an evolutionary edge, polar bears will find it harder to sneak up on prey in Alaska, for instance, while white hares in Russia may be snatched more often by eagles and other predators.

Many species are under pressure in the Arctic....

And that, in turn, is affecting the people.

"Indigenous people who've relied on polar bears, seals, walrus and bowhead whales are being confronted by a whole new ecology," said Bob Corell, U.S. chairman of an eight-nation report into Arctic climate change to be published in November.

One of the reasons for the dramatic change is that as the snow and ice recede, exposing the ground underneath, the change accelerates because that ground absorbs heat rather than reflecting more of it.

On the other end of the world, things aren't as bad - at least not yet - because the layer of ice over the ground of Antarctica is so thick. However, Reuters says on Saturday,

Measurements of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea, on the Pacific Ocean side of Antarctica, show they are melting much faster than in recent years and could break up.

And they contain more ice than was previously estimated, meaning they could raise sea level by more than predicted, the international team of researchers writes in the journal Science.

"The ... Amundsen Sea glaciers contain enough ice to raise sea level by 1.3 meters (4 feet)," the researchers wrote in their report. ...

And as the surrounding ice shelves melt - which they are doing - this process will speed up, the researchers said.

"The ice shelves act like a cork and slow down the flow of the glacier," said Bob Thomas of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Theirs is the second report this week to warn of rapidly melting glaciers in Antarctica.

On Tuesday a team at NASA and the University of Colorado reported that the 2002 breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf on the other side of the continent had accelerated the breakup of glaciers into the Weddell Sea.

Scientists say the rate of change of the flow of the glaciers is small at present. The thing is, it's accelerating. How much it can accelerate is something unknown at present. But the potential is sobering, since a 4 foot increase in ocean depth could devastate coastal areas around the world. True, at the rate that things are happening I won't live to see the results. But the grandchildren of my generation easily could.