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Science

Arctic Warming Drying Up Lakes 377

Posted by Zonk from the environment-sucks dept.
kingofalaska writes "An accelerating Arctic warming trend over the past quarter of a century has dramatically dried up more than a thousand large lakes in Siberia probably because the permafrost beneath them has begun to thaw, according to a paper to be published the journal Science." From the article at the LA Times: "About 125 of the 1,170 shrunken lakes disappeared altogether, and most are now considerably smaller than the study's baseline of 40 hectares, or about 99 acres, the researchers found. If Arctic temperatures continue to rise, the scientists said, many of the lakes in high northern latitudes, where they are ubiquitous, could eventually disappear."
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Arctic Warming Drying Up Lakes More

Arctic Warming Drying Up Lakes

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  • Mebbe... (Score:3, Funny)

    by JustOK ( 667959 ) on Sunday June 05, 2005 @06:25AM (#12728228) Journal
    the earth just sucks.

  • Tropical (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RocketRainbow ( 750071 ) <rocketgirl@Nospam.myrealbox.com> on Sunday June 05, 2005 @06:26AM (#12728229) Homepage Journal
    On the other hand, it's great that we'll all be living by the seaside with lovely warm weather. Seriously, it's so easy for people to become complacent, thinking the warmer weather's going to be lovely, and who cares if the beach moves a little closer to the fish and chips shop? Perhaps it's time to change the message to: "Just a half a degree change means that all your food will be laced with horrible poisins and chemicals and millions of less fortunate people will die" but then, so many people happily chow down on poptarts and hamburgers, and who cares what happens to a few africans? People's lack of imagination and forethought is quite frightening sometimes.

    • Re:Tropical (Score:2, Insightful)

      by TERdON ( 862570 )
      Except those guys living in the Netherlands, Bangladesh, or on a southern pacific island, among others. They will living by the seaside, sure. On the side with seawater all over it.
    • Y'know just 4 or 5 degrees would do it. It'd have no effect on food, I don't know where you get that one.

      The Africa problem BTW has bugger all to do with global warming. US/EU agricultural subsidies and trade tariffs are the cause and at least the EU is changing it's agricultural policies so that farmers are paid for doing nothing instead of being paid for producing. It has also pretty much zero rated African imports.

      • Yes it would. The average global temperature today is only 9 degrees hotter than the height of the last ice age, so 4-5 degrees would make a huge difference. The temp now it about 1 degree hotter than at the turn of the 20th century. yes, I took meteorology last semester

      • The Africa problem BTW has bugger all to do with global warming. US/EU agricultural subsidies and trade tariffs are the cause and at least the EU is changing it's agricultural policies so that farmers are paid for doing nothing instead of being paid for producing. It has also pretty much zero rated African imports.

        Some of Africa's problems of growing enough food is due to climate changes though not all. Ethiopia for instance used to be a breadbasket producing more than enough food to feed the populatio

  • Also glaciers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SensiMillia ( 217366 ) on Sunday June 05, 2005 @06:27AM (#12728233)
    Not only lakes, also glaciers are drying. They even pack them in foil to protect them from melting.
    Glacier wrapped in foil to stop melting [www.cbc.ca]
    • what struck me as kind of funny in there:
      "Environmentalists from WWF International, Greenpeace and other groups protested as the glacier was covered.

      They dismissed the foil as a short-term solution. The worldwide problem of melting glaciers can only be addressed by cracking down on greenhouse gases and other things that contribute to climate change, the environmentalists said."

      seems like those environmentalists are protesting the wrong thing there.
      even tho giving a glacier a nice shiny coat isn't gone sol

      • Re:Also glaciers (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nihilogos ( 87025 ) on Sunday June 05, 2005 @07:18AM (#12728395)
        even tho giving a glacier a nice shiny coat isn't gone solve the problem on the long term, it will extend the glaciers life a bit, giving those environmentalists time to find and sort out the real problem. So why the hell are they protesting it?

        Because the whole idea is stupid and indicative of the developed world's approach to climate change: spend money so that rich people can still ski in Switzerland.

        Enviromentalists can't sort out the real problem. Every single person on the planet has to take responsibility for it. But we won't. And we'll vote out any government that tries to make us change.

        • Re:Also glaciers (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ajs ( 35943 )
          "Enviromentalists can't sort out the real problem. Every single person on the planet has to take responsibility for it. But we won't. And we'll vote out any government that tries to make us change."

          Bravo! I'd really like to see some responsibility in this whole mess, but it's not going to happen. Too many people feel too strongly, and at best you'll get tin-foil-hat responses like lowering CO2 emmissions (when we know darned well that CO2 is one of the least effective greenhouse gasses, and most plans to c

  • Lakes drying up (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 05, 2005 @06:28AM (#12728239)
    This must be a serious blow for the Siberian Tourist Board.

  • Increasing? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zonnald ( 182951 ) on Sunday June 05, 2005 @07:33AM (#12728424)
    To quote a paragraph from tfa;

    By contrast, the scientists found that in Siberian areas where the ground below is still permanently frozen, the number of lakes actually increased by about 4% and total lake area grew by about 12% over the last three decades.

    Interestingly they neglected to indicate how many hectares this 12% represented.

    I guess that wasn't as dramatic a headline.

    Arctic Warming Is Drying Up Lakes, Study Finds, but some lakes actually growing

    • The point of the article is that there is change occuring due to global warming. The exact size of the problem is irrelevent as is whether or not some lakes are getting bigger. The big news here is that permefrost areas are unfreezing which is having an effect on the landscape of the artic.
    • Isn't it natural than when the permafrost is melting in the neighbouring areas, that there are more water to fill the lakes where the permafrost is still present?

      This isn't about preserving lakes, this is about figuring out what the global warming caused by us will mean for our common future. The early signs appear most dramatically in the artic regions [bbc.co.uk], glaciars in mountain areas in Asia [abc.net.au], Africa [bbc.co.uk] and on the water level influence on islands in the pacific [southpacific.org]. But if the melting accelerates, which it probably

    • No, the point is that *even though* the Arctic is getting wetter the lakes disappear as soon as the permafrost melts. Since the permafrost is in retreat, that is expected to dominate.

      Both the warming and the wettening of the Arctic have been anticipated for about twenty years; the abrupt decline in lake area is new and unexpected.

      Yes, your headline is less dramatic, but it also is less descriptive of the main new information.

      The purpose of a headline is to summarize, not to tell the whole story. That's
    • Your hair is getting thinner, but at least you've got more growing out of your nose and ears.

  • Residents of Arctic region already feeling effects (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 05, 2005 @08:10AM (#12728526)
    Please see The Arctic: Earth's Early Warning System [alternet.org] "The Inuit are already suffering dramatic changes to their Arctic environment, warns a native leader... unpredictable weather, melting of permafrost and glaciers, decreasing sea ice, as well as the presence of new species such as barn owls, robins and mosquitoes never seen before by the Inuit people."
  • The Barbarians of Halas are glad it's finally defrosting.

  • Don't worry... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday June 05, 2005 @12:06PM (#12729488) Homepage
    ...global warming won't kill us. Because we'll wisen up? Nah. But there's simply not enough reserves to go around. Positive estimates suggest we have 50 years left of oil reserves, with maybe another 50 running on coal (assuming we have to replace all oil with coal). After that, we might want to polluate as much as we like, but there's simply not any left to go around. Geologically speaking, we're burning up the reserves of millions of years during a few short centuries. When that's done, you're going to want all the warmth you can get.

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