Weather experts say Arctic climate is changing

MONTREAL — While folks in Kuujjuaq headed down to the Kuujjuaq River to escape record high temperatures this summer, Iqaluit residents just zipped up their jackets and shivered under gray skies and damp, windy weather.

But in the end, all residents in Arctic regions may receive the same long-term weather forecast — that the process of global warming seems to be speeding up.

Over the past 100 years, the world’s climate has heated up by .5 degrees. But most of the the warmest years ever recorded have been in the past decade, and last year was the warmest year on earth for that period.

In 1998, summer temperatures in the Eastern Arctic were three to five degrees warmer than usual, although this year, temperatures were actually a degree below average.

But as different as the summers of 1998 and 1999 appear to be on the surface, weather specialists believe that these variations are due to climate instability associated with global warming.

“It’s a really, really big signal,” said Brian Paruk, a climatologist with Environment Canada’s Arctic weather department in Edmonton.

The Arctic is an excellent place to see the effects of global warming. That’s because slight changes in global climate conditions are first seen in the Arctic. A change of one degree in the South can also result in a more intense change of two degrees in the Arctic.

“It gives up a good picture of what’s been happening,” Paruk said.

First signs in the Arctic

So, climatologists expect to find the first substantial signs of global warming in the Arctic.

That’s why the US National Science Foundation poured $19 million into the 1997-98 SHEBA project to study Arctic sea ice and determine whether its melting has accelerated.

When sea ice covers less of the ocean’s surface, sea water absorbs more heat and warms up. This warmer water becomes fresher, and moves in different ways, causing many regions to heat up and others to possibly cool down.

Some scientists even believe that the sea ice cover in the polar regions may completely disappear within 50 years.

Although high precipitation in the North Pacific ocean and unusual water currents pushed more ice into the Davis Strait this year, there were still huge areas of ice-free water at very high latitudes near Siberia.

Sea ice was also at its minimum level of thickness.

But how global warming will affect weather over the short term is anyone’s guess.

“What we might see in the Eastern Arctic is winters in the -30ish range and the summers a couple of degrees warmer,” said Paruk.

This summer, northern Quebec already experienced higher than average temperatures. The top temperature recorded this summer in Kuujjuaq was an astonishing 33.1 degrees, reached on July 28.

Temperatures averaged two degrees higher in Nunavik, showing the highest rate of increase anywhere in Quebec.

An increase in average temperatures results in a longer period during which temperatures don’t dip below freezing.

Devastating effects on wildlife

These changes may seen insignificant, but scientists caution that they could produce devastating effects on plants, animals and humans in the Arctic.

Researchers have found that even a single week’s difference in the ice breaking and freezing up can leave female polar bears 22 kilograms lighter and less well-equipped to feed their young. Ice die-back also leaves seals with no protective ice for their dens.

Without ice, walrus can’t ride the ice floes in search of new feeding grounds. Polar bears who travel on ice pans for prey are prevented from doing so.

If the climate warms considerably, whales and fish would be affected by higher water temperatures, new currents and a change in the availability of food.

On the positive side, some species of animals and insects could flourish and new activities, such as forestry or even farming, could also theoretically be possible.

Robins in Nunavik

The effects of warming are already being seen in the Western Arctic, where salmon are now found in the Beaufort Sea.

This spring, residents of Kangirsuk on the Ungava Bay coast of Nunavik noted robins.

Warmer conditions are also bringing Arctic prehistory to light. An ancient hunter’s body recently surfaced out of melting ice in the Yukon.

But global warming could also set off an extreme cooling event leading to a new ice age.

A recent article in the journal Nature says that during the last cold snap around 8,500 years ago, the circulation of warm, salty water was cataclysmically disrupted when two huge lakes on the Laurentian Shield suddenly drained into the Hudson Bay.

This resulted in more precipitation and a re-routing of ocean currents that caused a rapid cooling of the climate. The change occurred over a very short period of time — between three and 20 years.

If Arctic ice caps do eventually melt, the same conditions that that cooled the climate off thousands of years ago could once again emerge.

“It’s too early to say exactly what will happen, but we have to pay attention,” said meteorologist Denis Gosselin, from Montreal’s Environment Canada office.

Gosselin warns that there may also be more instability in our weather, with other catastrophic consequences. There could be more extremes, including floods, windstorms, bli ards and events such as last year’s avalanche in Kangiqsualujjuaq.

Rapid climate change?

If temperatures rise considerably and permafrost begins to thaw, erosion will increase, and Arctic buildings would become structurally unstable.

Those who study weather are now acknowledging that global climate change may be rapid and tumultuous.

“It’s a hot topic here,” said Gosselin.

Yet despite increased acceptance that climate change is likely to cause upheavals, 14 million vehicles in Canada’s South continue to spew out a variety of greenhouse gases that accelerate global warming.

Wheile Environment Canada’s own “Primer of Climate Change” (at http://www.ec.gc.ca/climate/primer) counsels citizens to recycle and conserve, politicians haven’t moved their response to global warming to the crisis stage either.

“Here, in Quebec they’re still picking up the pieces from the ice storm,” Gosselin said.