sudden climate change (Page 3)

The Earth?s temperature in the year 2001 was the second highest since global records began 140 years ago, according to the UN?s World Meteorological Organization.The higher temperatures led to an increase in the severity and frequency of storms and to droughts and other unusual weather conditions.

Nine of the 10 warmest years in the last four decades have occurred since 1990, and temperatures are rising three times faster than in the early 1900s, he says. This year?s global average surface temperature is expected to be 57.96 Fahrenheit. The record, set in 1998, was 58.24 Fahrenheit.
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NASA scientists have discovered that a huge release of methane from gas that had been frozen beneath the ocean floor heated the Earth by up to 13 degrees Fahrenheit 55 million years ago. They used a computer simulation to better understand the role of methane in sudden climate change in the far past. While today?s greenhouse gas studies focus on carbon dioxide, methane is 20 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere.

In the last 200 years, atmospheric methane has been increasing, along with carbon dioxide. In fact, methane has more than doubled due to decomposing organic materials in wetlands and swamps and emissions from gas pipelines, coal mining, increases in irrigation and livestock flatulence.
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Alaska contains several thousand valley glaciers, and fewer than 20 of them are advancing, while many of the rest are retreating, according to a study by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Bruce F. Molnia. Significant glacier retreat, thinning, stagnation, or a combination of these changes characterizes all eleven mountain ranges and three island areas that presently support glaciers there.

?The Earth recently emerged from a global climate event called the ?Little Ice Age,? during which Alaskan glaciers expanded significantly. The Little Ice Age began to wane in the late 19th century. In some areas of Alaska, glacier retreat started during the early 18th century, prior to the beginning of the industrial revolution,? says Molnia.
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The far north town of Iqaluit in Canada is experiencing extraordinary heat. Temperature spikes in the far north are a sudden climate change danger signal, and the situation in this area is highly unusual.

“We’ve had a really stagnant situation,” saod Yvonne Wallace, a meteorologist with Environment Canada’s Arctic Weather Centre in Edmonton. Four Iqaluit records were broken in July. “You had an amazing month here,” she said.

On July 15, the temperature reached an all-time record of 75F, breaking a record set in the 1980s. Again on July 27, a temperature of 74F broke a 1969 record.
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