This week in climate change effects: wilder fires, toxic tundra and iceberg 'islands'

Wildfire in southern California

The record-breaking heat may be easing across much of North America, but the dramatic markers of our fast-changing climate continue unabated.

In a summer where much of the continent has sweltered under epic heat and humidity, it is not surprising that forest fires are on the rise. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences reveals that Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons are far more likely to experience large fires more frequently.

According to Discovery Science, researchers used established climate models and compared climate conditions, fire frequency, temperature changes and precipitation levels. From this they determined that within just a few decades, big fires may become as much as 10 times more common than they have been in the last 10,000 years—likely once every 20 to 30 years.

From the article:

This study helps explain what people who live in the West have begun to notice in recent years, said Terry Chapin, an ecosystem ecologist who studies the effects of climate change on wildfires at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Serious wildfires seem to be happening more often than they used to, he said.

“That’s something the United States has not come to grips with, with respect to climate change: We assume that either climate change doesn’t happen or that we can manage things such that climate change won’t affect us,” Chapin said. “This seems like a clear and present example where recent and projected changes in climate are going to have a huge impact on human society. We need to adjust and adapt rather than try to fix the symptoms.”

Arctic melting releases long-buried toxins

In the Canadian Arctic, toxins from decades-old chemical processes have long been buried in the frozen tundra. Known as ‘persistent organic pollutants’, this collection of toxic chemicals includes DDT and toxaphene, among others. These deeply dangerous toxins take decades to degrade naturally, and have been known to accumulate in the fatty tissues of humans and wildlife, causing cancer, birth defects and other health problems.

For the past decade, the amount of persisten organic pollutants in the atmosphere has steadily decreased. Unfortunately, thanks to Arctic warming, researchers believe the numbers are set to increase dramatically.

From SolveClimateNews:

Climatologists at Environment Canada, the Canadian environmental agency, found that as climate change heats up oceans and melts sea ice and snow, the buried pollutants, known as legacy POPs, are being re-released back into the atmosphere.

This could undermine international treaties to restrict production and importation of the high-risk toxics and human exposure to them, the scientists say.

The research was published online yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change ahead of print publication.

Read more at SolveClimateNews.

Manhattan-sized iceberg sighted off Newfoundland

Satellite photo shows the ice island floating off Labrador in early July | Photo Credit: NASA

Last summers’ massive calving of Greenland’s Petermann glacier continues to produce gigantic icebergs in the North Atlantic. The latest (and largest) iceberg sighted off Newfoundland is particularly remarkable. At a staggering 50 square kilometres in size, this ‘ice island’ is the biggest iceberg in the region in recent memory.

From an article on CTV.ca:

Sara Weitkamp, a marine science technician with the U.S. Coast Guard, flew over the ice island Tuesday as part of the International Ice Patrol. She has completed 19 other similar missions.

“It’s definitely the biggest piece of ice I’ve seen in my history of patrolling over the ocean,” she said in an interview. ”There’s a bunch of melt ponds and rivers that have started on it, just from the deterioration of it. It’s amazing to think that something that big has lasted that long, down in an area that we patrol where we’re used to seeing much smaller icebergs.”

The giant ice slab shrank in the last week from 54.5 square kilometres measured Monday — almost as big as the island of Manhattan — to 49.5 square kilometres on Friday.

Category: News