Melting ice could make the Arctic stormier

October 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Arctic land and seas lock up as much as a fourth of the world's carbon dioxide, so the melting of Arctic ice can potentially alter climate, says a new study. Current levels of global warming could diminish or reverse this vast Arctic sink -- one of the world's biggest -- possibly upsetting expected rates of climate change.

October 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, ecologists estimate that Arctic lands and oceans are responsible for up to 25 percent of the global net sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). In their review paper, David McGuire of the US Geological Survey and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and his colleagues show that the Arctic has been a carbon sink since the end of the last Ice Age, which over time has accounted for between zero and 25 percent, or up to about 800 million metric tons, of the global carbon sink.

October 15th, 2009 LONDON - A top Polar specialist has warned that the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years' time. "It's like man is taking the lid off the northern part of the planet," Professor Peter Wadhams, from the University of Cambridge, told BBC News.

October 14th, 2009 Explorers: North Pole summers ice free in 10 yearsLONDON — The North Pole will turn into an open sea during summer within a decade, according to data released Wednesday by a team of explorers who trekked through the Arctic for three months The Catlin Arctic Survey team, led by explorer Pen Hadow, measured the thickness of the ice as it sledged and hiked through the northern part of the Beaufort Sea in the north Pole earlier this year during a research project. Their findings show that most of the ice in the region is first-year ice that is only around 1.8 meters (six feet) deep and will melt next summer.

September 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - New findings by scientists indicate that that Arctic ice would last decades longer than thought, and the region won't experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040. Some models had previously predicted that the Arctic could be ice free in summer by as soon as 2013, due to rising temperatures from global warming.

September 17th, 2009 Arctic sea ice melt still heavy, but no recordWASHINGTON — The summer melt of Arctic sea ice wasn't quite as bad this year as the last two years. But it still ranked as the third biggest melt on record.

September 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - If a new research is anything to go by, then the Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past, with global warming causing dramatic biological responses in the region. The research was led by Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University, along with a large, international team that carried out ecosystem-wide studies of the biological response to Arctic warming during the fourth International Polar Year, which ended in 2008.

August 7th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A climate model has predicted that global warming, combined with nuclear waste, may make the Arctic Ocean a polluted soup by the year 2070. According to a report in New Scientist, Ola Johannessen, director of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Bergen, Norway, and his colleagues, developed the model.

July 15th, 2009 LONDON - Reports indicate that the biggest glacier in the Arctic is on the verge of losing a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan. According to a report in New Scientist, a group of scientists and climate change activists who are closely monitoring the Petermann glacier's ice tongue believe that the rapid flow of ice is in part due to warm ocean currents moving up along the coast of Greenland, fuelled by global warming.

July 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft has revealed a dramatic thinning of Arctic sea ice between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record. The new results provide further evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic's ice cover.

July 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study by scientists has shown a dramatic increase in the amount of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean. Fresh water flowing into or out of the Arctic Ocean plays an important role in ocean circulation and may be a factor in the response of the world ocean to climate change.

May 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Large-scale agricultural burning in Russia, Kazakhstan, China, US, Canada and Ukraine is having a much greater impact on the melting of Arctic ice than previously suspected, according to latest research. A singular threat is springtime burning to remove crop residues for new planting or clear brush for grazing - because the black carbon or soot produced by the fires can lead to accelerated melting of snow and ice.

May 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A research has found that agricultural fires during spring have an adverse impact on the melting Arctic, because the black carbon or soot produced by the fires can lead to accelerated melting of snow and ice. The two-year international field campaign known as POLARCAT was conducted most intensively during two three-week periods last spring and summer and focused on the transport of pollutants into the Arctic from lower latitudes.

May 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has suggested that sediments deposited in the ocean by major Arctic rivers may hold clues to understand how Earth's climate will change in the next few decades. The study was carried out by geoscientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A and M University, US.

April 7th, 2009 WASHINGTON - New evidence from NASA and satellite observations has shown that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover in the Arctic is continuing, with the ice cap thinning as well. In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a surprising rate.