Sen. Stevens hosts session on Arctic warming

by The Associated Press

A group of some of the most influential Arctic scientists and federal administrators gathered in Fairbanks May 29 to talk about the need for more research into warming of the Arctic.

The scientists testified at a hearing of the Senate appropriations committee, chaired by Sen. Ted Stevens at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The Arctic is the first place on the planet to feel the effects of climate change, the researchers said.

Villagers along the Arctic Ocean already see evidence of climate changes every day, said Caleb Pungowiyi, president of a nonprofit foundation established by NANA Regional Corp.

The sky isn’t as blue as it used to be, obscured frequently by a strange white haze, he said. The shrinking ice cap is forcing marine mammals and other sea life away from shore, so hunters must travel farther.

Because the protective pack ice forms later and softer, storms that batter the coast eat great chunks of land away around Barrow and the villages of Kivalina, Point Hope and Shishmaref.

“I don’t endorse or denounce the concept,” Stevens said. “I’m still in the process of finding out what’s going on.”

Several researchers said current climate changes likely stem from a combination of factors including natural variation and human activity.

“We don’t know whether this change is part of a cycle or is following a long-term, possibly irreversible trend,” said Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation.

Scientists agree that the world’s temperature rose by 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last century, an increase unprecedented during the last 1,000 years. The Arctic warmed as much as 7 or 8 degrees in that time.

The pack ice that normally insulates coastal villages from winter storms shrinks 3 percent a year, as it has since the 1970s, scientists said. Arctic sea ice is 40 percent thinner than it was 30 years ago, while snow melts in Barrow 40 days earlier in the same time period.