Category: RT Newswire

Climate change warms Arctic, cools Antarctica
Fri May 2, 2008 5:07pm EDT  By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Arctic and Antarctica are poles apart when it comes to the effects of human-fueled climate change, scientists said on Friday: in the north, it is melting sea ice, but in the south, it powers winds that chill things down.

The North and South poles are both subject to solar radiation and rising levels of climate-warming greenhouse gases, the researchers said in a telephone briefing. But Antarctica is also affected by an ozone hole hovering high above it during the austral summer.

“All the evidence points toward human-made effects playing a major role in the changes that we see at both poles and evidence that contradicts this is very hard to find,” said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

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Rain and snow spell relief for Great Lakes
Fri May 2, 2008 1:26pm EDT  By Jonathan Spice

TORONTO (Reuters) – Twice as much autumn rain and early winter ice helped Lake Superior, the biggest of North America’s Great Lakes, bounce back from record low water levels reached last year.

The deep, cold lake on the Canada-U.S. border — the largest freshwater body of water in the world by surface area — rose about 31 cm (1 foot) in seven months, with half of that in April alone as the spring thaw melted heavy winter snowfall that arrived late in the season.

The turnaround in the uppermost of the Great Lakes could literally trickle down to its four lower cousins, spelling relief for shippers who use the major waterway and residents concerned over shallow channels and receding shorelines.

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‘Big Dry’ hits Australian farmers 
By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney 

The drought has forced 10% of farmers off the land in just five years

More than 10,000 Australian farming families have had to leave their land as a result of the country’s ongoing drought, new figures reveal. There has been a 10% drop in the number of farmers in the past five years, the figures released by the Australia Bureau of Statistics revealed.

Australia is presently in the grip of the what’s known locally as the “Big Dry” – the worst drought in a century. The figures reveal its impact on the nation’s farming communities. They show that the number of farmers in Australia has dropped by a third in just 20 years.

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Arctic sea ice forecast: another record low in 2008
Arctic ice seen melting faster than anticipated
Thu May 1, 2008 1:43am EDT
24 Apr 2008
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Arctic sea ice, sometimes billed as Earth’s air conditioner for its moderating effects on world climate, will probably shrink to a record low level this year, scientists predicted on Wednesday.

In releasing the forecast, climate researcher Sheldon Drobot of the University of Colorado at Boulder called the changes in Arctic sea ice “one of the more compelling and obvious signs of climate change.”

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