Yes, I had heard about this. Those "lakes" are called leeds and from what
I understand are not that uncommon.
Steve
--- John Foster <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Located at
>
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,53418,00.html
>
> Time/International. SEPTEMBER 4, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 10
>
> The Big Meltdown
>
> As the temperature rises in the Arctic, it sends a chill around the
> planet
> BY EUGENE LINDEN/CHURCHILL
>
> Here's a tip for anyone trying to figure out when and whether global
> warming
> might arrive and what changes it will bring: hop a plane to the Arctic
> and
> look down. You'll see that climatic changes are already reworking the
> far-north landscape. In the past two decades, average annual
> temperatures
> have climbed as much as 7[degrees]F in Alaska, Siberia and parts of
> Canada.
> Sea ice is 40% thinner and covers 6% less area than in 1980.
> Permafrost--permanently frozen subsoil--is proving less permanent. And
> even
> polar tourists are returning with less than chilling tales, one of which
> was
> heard around the world last week.
>
> Back from a cruise to the North Pole aboard the Russian icebreaker
> Yamal,
> tourists told the New York Times that a mile-wide lake had opened up at
> 90[degrees] north, with gulls fluttering overhead, and they had the
> pictures
> to prove it. The newspaper declared that such an opening in polar ice
> was
> possibly a first in 50 million years, though that claim was dismissed by
> scientists who nonetheless see other serious signs of Arctic warming
> (see
> box, page 56).
>
> On a less cosmic level, Mike Macri, who runs nature tours in Churchill,
> on
> the western shores of Hudson Bay in Canada's Manitoba province, has had
> to
> rewrite his brochures. The old ones encouraged tourists to arrive at
> Churchill in mid-June to see beluga whales, which migrate up the mouth
> of
> the Churchill River following the spring ice breakup. The new brochure
> encourages visitors to arrive as early as May.
>
> The ice also forms as much as two weeks later in the autumn than it used
> to
> in Hudson Bay, creating a bewildering situation for some of the local
> wildlife. Polar bears that ordinarily emerge from their summer dens and
> walk
> north up Cape Churchill before proceeding directly onto the ice now
> arrive
> at their customary departure point and find open water. Unable to move
> forward, the bears turn left and continue walking right into town,
> arriving
> emaciated and hungry. To reduce unscheduled encounters between
> townspeople
> and the carnivores, natural-resource officer Wade Roberts and his
> deputies
> tranquilize the bears with a dart gun, temporarily house them in a
> concrete-and-steel bear "jail" and move them 10 miles north. In years
> with a
> late freeze--most years since the late 1970s--the number of bears
> captured
> in or near town sometimes doubles, to more than 100.
>
> Humans are feeling the heat too. In Alaska, melting permafrost
> (occasionally
> hastened by construction) has produced "roller coaster" roads, power
> lines
> tilted at crazy angles and houses sinking up to their window sashes as
> the
> ground liquefies. In parts of the wilderness, the signal is more clear:
> wetlands, ponds and grasslands have replaced forests, and moose have
> moved
> in as caribou have moved out. On the Mackenzie River delta in Canada's
> Northwest Territories, Arctic-savvy Inuit inhabitants have watched with
> dismay as warming ground melted the traditional freezers they cut into
> the
> permafrost for food storage. Permafrost provides stiffening for the
> coastline in much of the north; where thawing has occurred, wave action
> has
> caused severe erosion. Some coastal Inuit villages are virtually
> marooned as
> the ground crumbles all around them. And as the ice retreats farther
> from
> the coast, Inuit hunters are finding that prey like walrus has moved out
> of
> reach of their boats.
>
> These isolated dramas play out far from the mid-latitudes of the planet,
> where the vast majority of people live, but they could soon have serious
> implications for all of us. What is really at risk in the Arctic is part
> of
> the thermostat of the earth itself. The difference in temperatures
> between
> the tropics and the poles drives the global climate system. The excess
> heat
> that collects in the tropics is dissipated at the poles, about half of
> it
> through what has been nicknamed the ocean conveyor, a vast deepwater
> current
> equivalent to 100 Amazon Rivers. Much of the rest of the heat is
> conveyed as
> energy in the storms that move north from the tropics. If the poles
> continue
> to warm faster than the tropics, the vigor of this planetary circulatory
> system may diminish, radically altering prevailing winds, ocean currents
> and
> rainfall patterns. One consequence: grain production in the breadbaskets
> of
> the U.S. and Canada could be in jeopardy if rainfall becomes less steady
> and
> predictable. Already, severe and unpredictable storms across the
> northern
> hemisphere may be a sign that the global system is changing.
=====
"In a nutshell, he [Steve] is 100% unadulterated evil. I do not believe in a 'Satan', but this man is as close to 'the real McCoy' as they come."
--Jamey Lee West
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