Scientists Study
Arctic Climate Changes
August 08, 2005 — By Associated Press
RENO, Nev. — A Reno scientist is
among a team of researchers who will spend the next several weeks
studying the icy Arctic Ocean to document historic climate changes.
Glenn Berger, a research professor at the Desert Research Institute, and
others set off Friday aboard the Healy, a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker.
"There are more climate changes happening up there than anywhere else in
the world," Berger said of the Arctic. "Models predict drastic changes
up there by the middle of this century."
Berger said his role in the project will be to help determine the
history of climate changes in the Arctic thousands of years ago by
taking sediment cores from the bottom of the ocean.
"If we're seeing these warming trends now, we want to look to the past
to see if anything like this has happened before," he said.
This is Berger's second trip this year to the Arctic Ocean. The $2.5
million research project is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Bill Wiseman, program director for the NSF's Arctic Natural Sciences
Program, said the expedition is using new technology to see whether
variations in the Arctic's climate are within normal range of those that
took place in Earth's recent past during the Holocene era, some 10,000
years since the last ice age.
"The fundamental concept is that the Arctic is undergoing some rather
exceptional and rapid changes at the moment," Wiseman told the Reno
Gazette-Journal. "We see this in the retreat of glaciers and sea ice.
"We're trying to understand what it is we're actually seeing," he said.
"Is it global warming or is it not global warming? We'll determine if
the situation is different than what has happened in the past, or if it
falls within the range of climate variations."
Berger said there are indications -- if not scientific evidence -- of a
warming trend.'
During the first expedition in June, Berger said a biologist told him
that puffins had moved from their lower-latitude habitat to the colder
regions of Barrow, Alaska, and were displacing Arctic birds. Then last
year, the first shark was sighted in the waters southwest of Barrow.
"A native who lives in one of the villages outside of Barrow told me he
saw a shark while they were hunting beluga whales," Berger said. "I
thought that was astounding. So the waters are warming."
This leg of the research expedition, which is set to wrap up Sept. 30,
is being conducted in cooperation with the Swedish icebreaker and
research vessel Oden, making it the largest geological expedition to the
central Arctic Ocean in 20 years.
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Information from: Reno Gazette-Journal,
http://www.rgj.com
Source: Associated Press |