This is my 2nd post concerning Global warming effects, I am still on the subject of the Melting Glaciers worldwide.
Here, we are contemplating the Arctic Ice melting, where scientists once predicted the Arctic would be ice-free by the end of 2030 but they had to revise their estimate according the rapidly growing global warming and decided that it will be ice-free in 2013 which is 3 years away from now.
The Arctic region is the area around the North Pole, essentially an ocean surrounded by land. The Arctic is home to an array of plants, animals, and people that survive in some of the most extreme conditions on the planet and that are uniquely adapted to such conditions. The Arctic region is home to almost 4 million people. The Arctic includes Greenland, Iceland, and the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Russia, and the United States. Economically, the region depends largely on natural resources, ranging from oil, gas, and metal ores to fish, reindeer and birds. Recently, the tourism sector has also grown in many parts of the Arctic
Arctic wildlife resources such as seals, reindeer, birds and fish have long been sold on world markets. Arctic seas contain some of the world’s oldest and most productive commercial fishing grounds, which provide significant catches for many Arctic countries, as well as for the rest of the world.
Moreover, the Arctic has significant oil and gas reserves, and the mineral reserves in parts of Russia and Canada provide large quantities of raw materials to the world economy.
The melting of the Arctic will impact other areas of the globe even more than we expected, as in my previous post the melted ice will change sea levels, living organisms in the ocean, more endangered species, ocean circulation patterns and water supplies, as well as release additional greenhouse gasses. Many species from around the world migrate to the Arctic in summer and depend on it for breeding and feeding, this will be altered significantly. The expansion of the forests will also reduce the
Expansion of the forests towards the North, for instance, may reduce the size of breeding grounds for hundreds of millions of migratory birds and can loose more than 50% of their breeding area during this century, including several globally endangered seabird species.
The WWF’s assesses that by 2010the sea levels will rise more than 1 meter which is twice the amount predicted in 2007 where 25% of the whole world population will be affected to sue to the corrosion of the coastlines. We know now that Human beings have reversed a cooling trend with greenhouse gas emissions, and the Arctic has reached the warmest temperature it’s seen in 2000 years as per a study done by the BBC. The research found that the Arctic region cooled at a rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per 1000 years till almost 1900 where warming took over, then reversed the cooling to warming up to 1.2 Degrees C since then. This warming effect has been on the rise in the last 10 years.
What is not known yet but predicted is when will we see a an ice-free summer in the Arctic region, some expeditions confirm that they found hundreds of miles of 50cm thick ice called “Rotten ice” though it makes navigation easier for the ships. It might be hard to believe after the stormy winter we went through in the US that the Ice is melting, but the rise of temperatures found to be 5 degrees higher than average; is to blame for this.
The higher temperatures prevent the formation of Ice in the winter as it helps slowing the ice growth.
Currently ice covers 2.03 million square miles; last year’s sea ice coverage, 1.59 million square miles, set the record. In the past ten years Arctic sea ice has declined 10 percent. Climate change is happening so fast that new data show that the thickness of Ice in the Arctic region has declined as much as 19% and is storing more carbon.
Now, the most prominent factor that decides the temperature of the Arctic is, YOU and ME and each one of us.
Till nest post
Sahar Andrade
Sahar Consulting
www.linkedin.com/in/saharconsulting
Going Green, 
