Looking at cold facts to explain climate change and its impact
Global warming, wacky weather and even tap-dancing computer-animated penguins on the big screen have turned the public’s attention to the inhospitable environments of the North and South polar regions for answers to our changing climate.
It’s one thing to talk about rising temperatures and strange weather; it’s quite another to explain the climate change driving them. That’s where scientists from the University of Ottawa and around the globe come in, as they explore Earth’s northern and southern polar regions to poke and prod climate information out of their frozen expanses.
What they are discovering are irreversible changes.
In September 2008, for example, a team of scientists, including Dr. Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa, reported that the entire 50 km2 Markham Ice Shelf had broken away earlier in August and was adrift in the Arctic Ocean.
This was only one of many alarming reports coming from northern regions. After a widely reported calving in July, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in the Canadian Arctic continued to break up, losing an additional 22 km2. The total ice-shelf loss in the summer of 2008 amounted to 215 km2 — three times the area of Manhattan Island.
"Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer," explained Dr. Copland. "And extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years."
And what will it all amount to in the end? That’s the mystery researchers like uOttawa’s Luke Copland hope to unravel.
By François Rochon
Published: April 2009
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