The Change Mariner

Signs of radical change in Arctic ecosystem

SeattleTimes:
Shrubs are appearing where before there were none; gray whales are venturing farther north; clams and their predators, diving sea ducks, are less plentiful. The ice is melting.

These disparate phenomena are signs of a radical change in the Arctic ecosystem. Moreover, changes in the Arctic mean changes everywhere else. That consensus is part of a broad discussion among 400 Arctic scientists meeting in Seattle this week as part of a new multimillion-dollar effort to study the far-reaching changes occurring in the far north.

The Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Washington, has brought together climatologists, biologists, oceanographers and social anthropologists to examine how warmer temperatures are altering life on the tundra and how the changes may affect the rest of the Earth.

Their findings, presented at a symposium yesterday, continued to add to a growing, and somewhat ominous scientific consensus.

The Arctic, which has seen temperatures increase 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century, is on track to become as warm as it has been in 130,000 years, according to Jonathan Overpeck, a University of Arizona paleoclimatologist, who studies the history of climate change.

...Implicit in a radical climate change, Overpeck asserted, is a mass species extinction.

There have been five known mass species extinctions — meaning more than 50 percent of the Earth's species were wiped out — and four were related to climate change, Overpeck said.