Climatic Changes: A rude awakening (Part II)

The retreat of the glaciers!

The 2004, Dennis Quaid movie Day after Tomorrow starts with an opening sequence where a whole Antarctic Ice Shelf breaks into two. It is an scene which inspires awe (as much as the movie does). The problem is that within 4 years of a fictional rendition, we are beginning to see the real time breaking of the ice shelfs. An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge. This is blamed on the glabal warming phenomenon.The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released.700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City -- has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs. Wilkins could lose a total of 800 to 3,000 sq kms of area after the ice bridge shattered. The Wilkins shelf has already shrunk by about a third from its original 16,000 sq kms when first spotted decades ago, its ice so thick would take at least hundreds of years to form.

Nine other shelves -- ice floating on the sea and linked to the coast -- have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002. The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) this century, Vaughan said, a trend climate scientists blame on global warming from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories and power plants.

While Ice sheets donot add to the level of sea water because the are mostly submerged and would release an equal volume as much they are submerged in, there is a grave risk that the retreat of ice sheets would accelerate Global warming which in return would melt the land based ice glaciers, not only increasing the sea water level but also making the availability of fresh water resources on earth scarce.

For a detailed report:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Health--Science/Earth/Global-Warming/ESA-satellite-images-show-ice-shelf-breaking-away-/articleshow/4464729.cms

Climatic Changes: A rude awakening (Part I)

The Death of Life Giving Rivers

A series of 5 articles published on the Times of India, 30th April 2009, was my rude awakening of how the environment against us dies, subject to the insensitive activities of human kind. These articles speak about silent changes in the environment, and yet these changes will at some point of time dramatically impact our lives, probably alter them forever.


Availability of fresh water from perenial rivers such as Ganga, Yellow and Niger has been severely compromised owing to the change in climatic patterns. Climatic changes and Global warming are impacting the water cycle in two opposite manners:
1. Increasing the glacial melts in the Polar regions thereby increasing the water level of the seas. This is expected to denude coastal areas of India and Bangladesh, not to mention New York City, San Francisco and London.
2. Global warming is also impacting the rainfall pattern and increasing the rate of evaporation thereby changing the flow leading to floods or longer dry spells impacting inhabitants, mostly in developing countries.
3. The state of the world's rivers and threat to freshwater are not entirely on account of climate change. Water pollution is another matter of grave concern. Effluents, garbage, sewage and other liquid and solid wastes that are deliberately pumped into rivers have been turning waters toxic as well as killing off aquatic life.
Thousands of litres of oil was spill into the Sutlej due to a industrial accident some time back. Besides polluting the river and cutting off oxygen suppkly to the river eco-system, the spill has compromised the Ropar wetlands, home to migratory birds.
4. And if all this is not enough, there are cases where the rivers are being killed off for supposedly "developmental" activities as is happening in Delhi where the Yamuna suffers because of the fact that our competent administration and authorities have not been able to handle the Common Wealth games preparations well. Read Post


How can we help? Increase awareness, be actively involved in saving this heritage, make your small attempts to make a large difference. I for once am joining the Jal Biradari in Delhi to save the Yamuna!