Arctic Warming Drying Up Lakes

kingofalaska writes "An accelerating Arctic warming trend over the past quarter of a century has dramatically dried up more than a thousand large lakes in Siberia probably because the permafrost beneath them has begun to thaw, according to a paper to be published the journal Science." From the article at the LA Times: "About 125 of the 1,170 shrunken lakes disappeared altogether, and most are now considerably smaller than the study's baseline of 40 hectares, or about 99 acres, the researchers found. If Arctic temperatures continue to rise, the scientists said, many of the lakes in high northern latitudes, where they are ubiquitous, could eventually disappear."

Comments

Also glaciers

[SensiMillia]

Not only lakes, also glaciers are drying. They even pack them in foil to protect them from melting.
Glacier wrapped in foil to stop melting

Re:Tropical

[Colin Smith]

"Crops become harder to grow"

Evidence? Where I live, warmer weather increases the length of the growing season. Crops are easier to grow.

Re:Here we go again...

[insert cool name]

I'm also waiting for the flood of global warming denial posts from people who have managed to see what all those foolish climatologists have missed - it would mean SUVs are a bad thing so cannot possible be true.

We have a similarly inspired great thinker here in Britain by the name of David Bellamy. He was a sort cuddly beardy bloke who used be on tv a lot in the 70s and 80s hiding in bushes and getting excited about birds.

Up until last year he was a well respected environmentalist having set up half a dozen environmental organisations and been invited to the board of half a dozen others. But he has a weakness.

He likes birds.

A lot.

His logic when it comes to global warming seems to be.

Global warming = must use less fossil fuel
less fossil fuel = more renewable energy
more renewable energy = more wind farms
more wind farms = more birds killed by turbines
dead birds = bad thing

Therefore global warming does not exist. QED.

So figuring that his credentials as a ornithologist made him fully qualified to dismiss any arguments put forward to the contrary by people who'd merely studied climatology he wrote piece denying global warming for the Daily Mail that was based on a load of psuedo science he'd found on random web sites.

George Monbiot did quite a nice job of demolishing him here :-

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-sc ience/

If you manage to find a copy of the debate that Channel 4 news ran between George and David it's well worth seeing.