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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Earth’s melting ice to be studied

Robert S. Boyd McClatchy

WASHINGTON – It seems like a paradox, but scientists say the best places to study global warming are the coldest regions on Earth. The Arctic, the Antarctic and lofty mountain ranges are showing the impact of higher temperatures more rapidly and dramatically than anywhere else on the planet.

Collapsing ice sheets, thawing permafrost, shrinking glaciers and thinning sea ice will be the focus of a yearlong, worldwide scientific extravaganza known as the International Polar Year, which researchers and policymakers from 60 nations will formally launch in Paris on today after five years of preparations.

“This is a critical time in humanity’s relationship with our planet,” said an author of the IPY concept, Robert Bindschadler, an Antarctic scientist who’s based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

“The poles are changing even faster than we anticipated,” said Robin Bell, the head of the Polar Research Board at the National Academy of Sciences. “We need to monitor environmental change to understand what’s happening to our planet.”

Data collected for the IPY will provide a baseline by which to measure future climate changes, according to Arden Bement, the director of the National Science Foundation.

Warming is felt most sharply in the far north, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average.

Greenland, for example, lost as much ice in one year as is contained in all the Swiss Alps, according to Konrad Steffen, a climatologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

A prime concern during the IPY will be the fate of the world’s glaciers, not only in polar regions but also in higher altitudes at lower latitudes near the equator.

Glaciers are “sentinels of climate change,” said Mark Myers, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey.