Polar Regions

Polar ice sheets are melting faster than authorities realize and could eventually submerge coastal communities worldwide, according to two studies released today. Researchers from the University of Arizona and the National Center for Atmospheric Research noted that sea levels rose 20 feet during a warming period 129,000 years ago and said the waters could rise just as high sometime after 2100 if global temperatures continue to climb.

The largest ice shelf in the Arctic -- an 80-foot-thick slab of ice nearly the size of Lake Tahoe -- has broken up, providing more evidence that the Earth's polar regions are responding to ongoing and accelerating rates of climatic change, researchers reported Monday. The Ward Hunt ice shelf, located 500 miles from the North Pole on the edge of Canada's Ellesmere Island, has broken into two main parts and a series of ice islands.

Working poles apart--on the crystal crown of the Arctic icecap and on the ice domes of Antarctica--researchers are coming to grips with Earth's frozen past in order to predict its future. For scientists trying to learn how global warming may affect the climate's course, understanding the character and chemistry of the ice and snow at the planet's extremities has taken on an unusual urgency.

With DreamWorks SKG having inked a deal with the developers of Playa Vista ["DreamWorks, Playa Vista Agree on Terms," Sept 22], perhaps they all might now pause and consider redesigning their development as one constructed on stilts. With the prospect of melting ice shelves in Earth's polar regions plus the decline of all alpine glaciers worldwide, the project site (plus Venice and Marina del Rey) could be under salt water in the not-too-distant future. Why not re-imagine a sizable portion of where the movie industry found its genesis here on the West Coast: downtown Los Angeles.

The giant arctic ice cap may be melting as a result of global warming, according to a new paper by an international team of researchers. An analysis using complex computer programs that mimic the climate system indicates only a 2% chance that arctic melting over the last 19 years is a result of natural climate changes, according to the paper appearing in today's edition of the journal Science. Also, there only is a 0.

At a glance, there is nothing about Lonnie Thompson that evokes Indiana Jones. There is nothing rakish, nothing reckless, nothing to suggest that in his soul, there is a kinship with the archeologist-adventurer of the silver screen. Outside of Ohio State University's venerable Mendenhall Laboratory and the corridors of the Byrd Polar Research Center's new headquarters a couple of miles away, the slight, bespectacled scientist goes generally unrecognized and unnoticed.

A large section of the floating Arctic ice pack north of Greenland shrank by 15% between 1976 and 1987, a possible sign of global warming caused by the greenhouse effect, a British researcher reported last week. That conclusion is based on sonar measurements of the thickness of a California-sized segment of ice pack made in 1987 by a British submarine that retraced the route taken by another submarine that sailed under the ice pack and made similar measurements in 1976.

Using a satellite-based altimeter, researchers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have found that the Greenland Ice Sheet has been growing thicker at a rate of about 0.9 inches per year since 1975. Meteorologist H. Jay Zwally and his colleagues at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., conclude in an article published last week in Science that the thickening results from increased snowfall caused by warming through the greenhouse effect.

Polar bears don't eat penguins, and young Connie Grande knows why. Connie and her sixth-grade classmates at Beachy Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima are learning about the Earth's polar regions through an innovative program developed by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The program is being introduced in local schools this fall.

Polar bears don't eat penguins, and young Connie Grande knows why. Connie and her sixth-grade classmates at Beachy Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima are learning about the Earth's polar regions through an innovative program developed by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The program is being introduced in local schools this fall.