Green Media E-Newsletter is brought to you by CMS ENVIS Centre on Media & Environment

Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Arctic ice loss driven by natural swings, not just mankind – study
Correspondent :
Natural swings in the Arctic climate have caused up to half the precipitous losses of sea ice around the North Pole in recent decades, with the rest driven by man-made global warming, scientists said on Monday.

The study indicates that an ice-free Arctic Ocean, often feared to be just years away, in one of the starkest signs of man-made global warming, could be delayed if nature swings back to a cooler mode.

Natural variations in the Arctic climate "may be responsible for about 30–50 percent of the overall decline in September sea ice since 1979," the U.S.-based team of scientists wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Sea ice has shrunk steadily and hit a record low in September 2012 -- late summer in the Arctic -- in satellite records dating back to 1979.

The ice is now around the smallest for mid-March, rivalling winter lows set in 2016 and 2015.

The study, separating man-made from natural influences in the Arctic atmospheric circulation, said that a decades-long natural warming of the Arctic climate might be tied to shifts as far away as the tropical Pacific Ocean.

"If this natural mode would stop or reverse in the near future, we would see a slow-down of the recent fast melting trend, or even a recovery of sea ice," said lead author Qinghua Ding, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

But in the long term the build-up of man-made greenhouse gases would become an ever more overwhelming factor, he wrote in an e-mail.

"Looking ahead, it is still a matter of when, rather than if, the Arctic will become ice-free in summer," said Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, who was not involved in the study.

The melt of the Arctic is disrupting the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and damaging wildlife such as polar bears and seals while opening the region to more oil and gas and shipping.

Professor Andrew Shepherd, of Leeds University, who did not participate in the study, welcomed it as pinning down the relative shares of natural and man-made influences. "Nobody's done this attribution before," he said.

The findings could help narrow down huge uncertainties about when the ice will vanish.

In 2013, a U.N. panel of climate scientists merely said human influences had "very likely contributed" to the loss of Arctic ice, without estimating how much. It said that the ice could disappear by mid-century if emissions keep rising.

 
SOURCE : http://in.reuters.com/article/climatechange-arctic-idINKBN16K22V
Back to pevious page

Advertise with Green Media

Be a part of this successful campaign and advertise your events, seminars, conferences, festivals or services, job requirements etc. "GREEN MEDIA" - unique E-newsletter DAILY reaches to more than 3000 environmentalists, wildlife experts, activists, filmmakers and media professionals. For Advertisement contact: cmsenvis@cmsindia.org

Print Media Trends and Analysis: CoP 11/MoP 6



Assessment of Using Social Media to Raise environmental Awareness

Trends in the coverage of environment by news channels



 



The Hindu | Times of India | The Pioneer | The Statesman | The Tribune | Hindustan Time | Sahara Times | Business Lines | Business Standard |

  Economic Times| Financial Express | The Asian Age | Indian Express | The Telegraph | Deccan Herald | The Assam Tribune | The Sentinel  

 

 

 

 

Supported by: ENVIS Secretariat,Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, GOI.

    

Copyright © 2014 Centre for Media Studies. For Limited Circulation

 

 
Since India has no anti-spamming law, we follow the US directive passed in Bill.1618 Title III by the 105th US Congress, which states that mail cannot be considered spam if it contains contact information, which this mail does. If you want to be removed from the mailing list click on UNSUBSCRIBE