WWF warns Arctic ice melting faster than predicted

ICE WORLD

New Zealand's largest glacier will disappear: scientists
New Zealand's largest glacier is shrinking fast due to climate change and will eventually disappear altogether, scientists said Thursday. The 23-kilometre (14.3 mile) long glacier in the South Island's Southern Alps is likely to shrink at a rate of between 500 and 820 metres a year, said Martin Brook, a physical geography lecturer at Massey University. "In the last 10 years the glacier has receded a hell of a lot," Brook said on the university website. "It's just too warm for a glacier to be sustained at such a low altitude -- 730 metres above sea level -- so it melts rapidly and it is going to disappear altogether." The rapid melting has seen a lake seven kilometres long and two kilometres wide form at the base of the glacier. Thirty-five years ago, the lake did not exist. "The last major survey was in the 1990s and since then the glacier has retreated back 180 metres a year on average," Brook said. The lake at the foot of the glacier is speeding up the melting as more ice is submerged under the surface of the water. A study last year by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research found the volume of ice in the Southern Alps had shrunk almost 11 percent in the past 30 years. More than 90 percent of this loss was due to the melting of the 12 largest glaciers in the mountain range due to rising temperatures, the university report said.

by Staff Writers
Montreal (AFP) April 23, 2008
Arctic sea ice is melting "significantly faster" than predicted and is approaching a point of no return, conservation group the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned in a new study released Wednesday.

The volumes of the Greenland Ice Sheet and ice in the Arctic Ocean were estimated at 2.9 million and 4.4 million cubic metres respectively in September 2007 -- the lowest ever levels recorded, the organization said.

The sea ice shrank to 39 percent below its 1979-2000 mean volume, it said.

"Recently observed changes are happening at rates significantly faster than predicted" by the 2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and last year's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), WWF said.

The melting of arctic sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet was happening so fast that experts were now questioning whether the situation is close to "tipping point," where sudden and possibly irreversible change takes place.

"When you look in detail at the science behind the recent Arctic changes it becomes painfully clear how our understanding of climate impacts lags behind the changes that we are already seeing in the Arctic," said Martin Sommerkorn, one of the authors of the report.

The WWF will present its report, comprised of the latest research in the region, to the meeting Thursday of the Arctic Council, which groups Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States.

The conservation group's researchers also warned of the devastating effect the rapid melting of the arctic ice could have on polar bears in Canada, where two thirds of the world's population of the animals live.

"Previous models had predicted that melting sea ice would mean some polar bear populations could become extinct by 2050. The new evidence points to even earlier regional extinctions," said Peter Ewins, director of species conservation at WWF-Canada.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada will present the government with its estimates of the status of polar bears there on Friday.

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ICE WORLD

Austrian glaciers shrink the most in five years

Vienna (AFP) March 29, 2008
Austria's glaciers retreated more than 22 metres (24 yards) on average last year, in the biggest shrinking for five years, the country's Alpine Club said Saturday.

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