Environment

North Pole Moves as Ice Sheets Melt

The North Pole’s surprise trip toward Greenland is due to Earth's rapidly melting ice sheets, according to a new study.

The distribution of mass across the planet determines the position of Earth's poles. Because Earth is a bit egg-shaped, the North Pole is always slightly off-centre. It's also been slowly drifting south, responding to long-term changes since the last Ice Age, as the enormous ice sheets that once covered large swaths of the planet melted and parts of the Earth rebounded from the lost weight.

But in 2005, the pole suddenly started making a beeline east for Greenland, moving a few centimetres eastward each year. The cause? Rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Environment

Global warming opens new shipping lane through Arctic.

A tanker carrying Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has crossed the Arctic Ocean route for the first time. It shows how global warming has opened up new routes for commercial shipping. It represents a new lane between Europe and Asia a third shorter than through the Suez Canal. The tanker left Norway in November, sailed over the Arctic Ocean and the Bering straight and arrived in Southwestern Japan.

 

Climate Change

A recent study published Sunday, shows that sea levels are rising much faster along a 600 mile stretch of USA coastline from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to just north of Boston, than they are around the globe.

Since 1990, global sea levels have risen by about 2 inches, while along this stretch of coastline, sea levels have risen by up to 4.8 inches.

Computer models have previously suggested that melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica will change ocean currents causing a rise of sea levels along the US east coast. Now this is the first study that shows this has already happened.

 

Climate Change

Scientists report that penguin numbers are plummeting. They attribute this phenomenon to global warming.

The flightless birds depend on krill as their principal source of food. As the Antarctic ice melts, so the supply of krill dwindles.

Chinstrap penguins have seen a 36% drop in numbers. Adelie penguins and emperor penguins have seen similar decline in numbers.

 

Global Warming

Scientists have identified at least 150 000 sites in the Arctic (Alaska and Greenland) where methane gas is actively bubbling to the surface, mainly along the edges of lakes where the ice margins are retreating due to the melting ice. The Arctic is the fastest warming region on the planet, and the release of this gas which has been trapped for millennia beneath the ice, together with the methane being released across Siberia due to the melting of the permafrost layer may significantly affect the rate of global warming.