By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report
As human-caused climate disruption progresses, sea level rise is happening far faster than previously expected. (Photo: Iceberg via Shutterstock)
Recently, two friends and I attempted to climb Washington State's beautiful, glacier-clad Mount Baker. Roped up while climbing up a glacier, roughly 1,500 feet below the summit, our route reached an impasse.
Given that it was technically early in the climbing season, and that we were on the standard route, we were dismayed to find a snow bridge spanning a 10-foot wide crevasse about to collapse. Finding no other way around the gaping void, we agreed to turn back and return another day.
After breaking down our camp and hiking out, we stopped off for a bite to eat in the nearby small town of Glacier, Washington. Our waitress told us of a friend of hers who worked in the Forest Service there, who told her that the area had, in the past year, "received the least amount of precipitation [that] it had for over 100 years."
Sea level rise is now happening much faster than anyone had expected.
While planning our next trip to Mount Baker, one of my climbing partners spoke with a local guide who informed him that, despite the fact that it was only mid-May, "climbing conditions are already equivalent to what they usually are in mid- to late July ... crevasses are opening up, and snow bridges are already melting out like it's late season."
Mountaineering in the throes of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), like the rest of life, is becoming increasingly challenging - as well as more dangerous.
The signs are all around us, every day now. All we need to do is open our eyes to the changes occurring in our regions. We need to look closely, and think about what is happening to the planet.
Now, zoom out with me for the bigger picture in this month's Climate Disruption Dispatch, and brace yourself for some difficult news.
Changes in the Arctic Ocean have now become so profound that the region is entering what Norwegianscientists are calling "a new era." They warn of "far-reaching implications" due to the switch from a permanent cover of thick ice to a new state in which thinner ice vanishes in the summer.
Meanwhile, sea level rise is now happening much faster than anyone had expected, according to a recently published study from climate scientists in Australia. The study showed that sea level rise has been accelerating over the last two decades.
NASA recently released a study that reveals that the planet's polar regions are in the midst of a stunning transformation, and showed that the massive 10,000-year-old Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica will soon completely collapse - perhaps as soon as 2020.
And these trends are on track to speed up, as March saw the global monthly average for atmospheric carbon dioxide hit 400.83 parts per million. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it was the first time the average surpassed 400 parts per million for an entire month since such measurements began in the late 1950s.
Earth
Starting on the earth and land front, the changes are coming fast and furiously.
A study released by researchers in Sweden and China revealed how ACD can seriously alter the prospects of survival for pretty much every living thing on the planet, and in particular birds. The researchers showed how in the last ice age there was a severe decline in the vast majority of the species studied, which is precisely what we are seeing currently. Massive numbers of species of birds are currently in dramatic decline.
A recent stark example of this is happening in Ohio, where birds are being devastated from the impacts of ACD, according to the Audubon Society's top scientist, who expects things to get far worse.
Greenhouse gases are billowing out of California's forests faster than they are being sucked back in.
In California, the ongoing megadrought is already responsible for having killed 12.5 million trees in that state's national forests,according to scientists with the US Forest Service. The scientists expect the die-off to continue. "It is almost certain that millions more trees will die over the course of the upcoming summer as the drought situation continues and becomes ever more long term," said biologist Jeffrey Moore, acting regional aerial survey program manager for the US Forest Service.
Please continue this article here: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31089-imminent-collapse-of-the-antarctic-ice-shelf-and-a-new-era-in-the-arctic
No comments:
Post a Comment