Wind shifts devastate ocean life

Entire marine ecosystems have been wiped out, devastating populations of sea birds and larger marine mammals.

Wind shifts devastate ocean life
By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

The delicate interplay between the oceans and atmosphere is changing with catastrophic consequences.
Entire marine ecosystems have been wiped out, devastating populations of sea birds and larger marine mammals.
These "dead zones" occur where there are disturbances to the nutrient-rich ocean currents, which are driven by coastal winds.
Extreme marine suffocations have occurred off the west coast of the US every year for the last five years.
The most intense event, which left the ocean floor littered with the carcasses of crabs, happened in 2006.

Climate models predict increasing uncertainty with wild fluctuations. We should expect more surprises Dr Jane Lubchenco, OSU
It was unlike anything that we've measured along the Oregon coast in the past five decades," said Dr Francis Chan, of Oregon State University (OSU).
Other coastal countries including Chile, Namibia and South Africa have also been affected.
Plant bloom
The common factor between all of the areas is that marine currents off the coast rise from the deep ocean.
These upwelling zones bring nutrient-rich water up from the deep, triggering plankton blooms that underpin the coastal food chain. Nearly 50% of the world's fisheries are in these areas.
The currents are driven by winds that move surface water away from the coast, drawing more up from the deep.
But now, observations along the west coast of the US suggest that the upwelling is being disrupted, changing its timing and intensity.
For example, in 2005 the upwelling was delayed which meant that the plankton blooms did not occur, leading to a collapse in fish populations.
This particularly hit migrating salmon, which pass along the coast in April and May every year.
"In 2005 they found nothing to eat," said Dr Bill Peterson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). "By the time upwelling started, they were dead."
Huge graveyard
An even more catastrophic event occurred in 2006 when the amount of upwelling doubled, leading to a huge influx of nutrients and a supercharged plankton bloom.
When these sank to the ocean floor they stripped the water column of oxygen, creating a 3,000 sq km (1,150 sq miles) dead zone, where creatures unable to swim away suffocated en masse.
Dr Francis Chan used underwater cameras to survey the area two months after the event.
"We were shocked to see a graveyard," he said. "Frame after frame of carcass, carcass, carcass."
Crabs, worms and sea stars all perished in the anoxic water.
The event was so severe that the researchers fear that marine life cannot return to the area.
"In previous years, fish that have escaped the low-oxygen area appear to have returned once the oxygen was renewed," said Dr Jane Lubchenco, also of OSU.
"This year may be different, however, because unlike earlier years, the living habitat was also suffocated."
Uncertain future
The researchers believe the cause of these events was changes in the intensity of the coastal winds, perhaps brought about by global warming.
"What we know from the climate change models is that the land will warm more than the sea," colleague Jack Barth told the BBC News website.
It is this difference in temperature and pressure that drives the winds.
"As you intensify that gradient - that will drive the stronger winds."
To confirm this link to climate change, the researchers say they need another 10 to 15 years of data.
In the meantime, they say, we must change our approach to managing and using these ecosystems, particularly for fish stocks.
"The most prudent course of action is to begin to think differently about what is happening," said Dr Lubchenco.
"Climate models predict increasing uncertainty with wild fluctuations. We should expect more surprises."
The research was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in San Francisco, US.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6370905.stmPublished: 2007/02/17 10:12:12 GMT

Panel: "Watered Down" Versions of Global Warming

In overwhelming proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of fossil fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes that are being observed.

February 2, 2007 (two articles)
NYT -Panel Sees Centuries of Warming Due to Humans
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW C. REVKIN

February 2, 2007
Panel Says Humans ‘Very Likely’ Cause of Global Warming
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:34 a.m. ET

February 2, 2007
NYT - Panel Sees Centuries of Warming Due to Humans
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW C. REVKIN PARIS, Feb. 2 – The world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas from the atmospheric buildup of smokestack and tailpipe gases that trap heat, but warming can be substantially blunted with prompt action, an international network of climate experts said today.
In a report released here today, the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, in its fourth assessment since 1990 of the causes and consequences of climate change, for the first time expressed with near certainty – more than 90 percent confidence – that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases were the main drivers of warming since 1950.
In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, put the confidence level at between 66 and 90 percent. Both reports are online at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/science/earth/www.ipcc.ch.
Should the concentration of carbon dioxide reach twice the pre-industrial average of 280 parts per million, the report said, the climate will likely warm some 3.5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, and there would be more than a one in 10 chance of much greater warming – a situation many earth scientists say poses an unacceptable risk.
Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling as a foregone conclusion sometime after midcentury without a prompt and sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an aggressive quest for expanded and improved nonpolluting energy options.
Even the midrange projection for warming, according to many climate experts and biologists, is likely to powerfully stress ecosystems and disrupt longstanding climate patterns that shape water supplies and agricultural production.
“The new report powerfully underscores the need for a massive effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable,” said John P. Holdren, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an energy and climate expert at Harvard University. “Since 2001 there has been a torrent of new scientific evidence on the magnitude, human origins and growing impacts of the climatic changes that are underway. In overwhelming proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of fossil fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes that are being observed.”
The conclusions came after a three-year review of hundreds of studies of clues illuminating past climate shifts, observations of retreating ice, warming and rising seas, and other shifts around the planet, and a greatly expanded suite of supercomputer simulations used to test how earth will respond to a building blanket of gases that hold heat in the atmosphere.
Big questions remain about the speed and extent of some impending changes, both because of uncertainty about future population and pollution trends and the complex interrelationships of the greenhouse emissions, clouds, dusty kinds of pollution, the oceans and earth’s veneer of life, which both emits and soaks up carbon dioxide and other such gases.
But a broad array of scientists, including authors of the report and independent experts, said the latest analysis was the most sobering view yet of a century in which – after thousands of years of relatively stable climate conditions – the new normal is likely to be continual change.
Should greenhouse gases continue to build in the atmosphere at even a moderate pace, temperatures by the end of the century could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm spell between ice ages, the report said.
At that time, the panel said, sea levels were 12 to 20 feet higher than they are now due to the melting of great amounts of ice now stored – but eroding – on Greenland and in parts of Antarctica.
The panel said there was no solid scientific understanding of how rapidly the vast stores of ice in polar regions will begin to erode, so their estimates for how seas will rise by 2100 – probably between 7 and 23 inches – were based mainly on how much the warmed oceans will expand, and not on contributions from melting of ice on land.
Other scientists have recently reported evidence that the glaciers and ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic could flow seaward far more quickly than estimated in the past and have proposed risks to coasts could be much more imminent. But the I.P.C.C. is proscribed by its charter from entering into speculation and so could not include such possible instabilities in its assessment.
Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization, said the lack of clarity should offer no one comfort. “The speed with which melting ice sheets are raising sea levels is uncertain, but the report makes clear that sea levels will rise inexorably over the coming centuries,” he said. “It is a question of when and how much, and not if,” he said, adding: “While the conclusions are disturbing, decision makers are now armed with the latest facts and will be better able to respond to these realities.”
Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which oversees the I.P.C.C. along with the meteorological group, said society now had plenty of information on which to act.
“The implications of global warming over the coming decades for our industrial economy, water supplies, agriculture, biological diversity and even geopolitics are massive,” he said. “This new report should spur policymakers to get off the fence and put strong and effective policies in place to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.”
The warming and other climate shifts will be highly variable around the world, with the Arctic particularly seeing much higher temperatures, said Susan Solomon, the co-leader of the section of the I.P.C.C. report on basic science and an atmospheric scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The kinds of vulnerabilities are very much dependent on where you are,” Dr. Solomon said in a telephone interview. “If you’re living in parts of tropics and they’re getting drier and you’re a farmer there are some very acute issues associated with even small changes in rainfall. Changes we’re already seeing are significant. If you are an Inuit and you’re seeing your sea ice retreating already that’s affecting your lifestyle and culture.”
The 20-page summary is a sketch of the findings that are most germane to the public and world leaders.
The full I.P.C.C. report, thousands of pages of technical background, will be released in four sections through the year – the first on basic science, then sections on impacts and options for limiting emissions and limiting inevitable harms, and finally a synthesis of all of the findings near year’s end.
In a news conference in Paris, Dr. Solomon declined to provide her own views on how society should respond to the momentous changes projected in the study.
“I honestly believe that it would be a much better service for me to keep my personal opinions separate than what I can actually offer the world as a scientist,” she said. “My stepson, who is 29, has an utterly different view of risks than I do. People are going to have to make their own judgments.”
Elisabeth Rosenthal reported from Paris, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.

February 2, 2007
Panel Says Humans ‘Very Likely’ Cause of Global Warming
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:34 a.m. ET
PARIS (AP) -- International scientists and officials hailed a report Friday saying that global warming is ''very likely'' caused by man, and that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level ''would continue for centuries'' no matter how much humans control their pollution.
The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, called it a ''very impressive document that goes several steps beyond previous research.''
A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said ''there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities.''
The 21-page summary of the panel's findings released Friday represents the most authoritative science on global warming. The panel comprises hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments.
The scientists said the changes are ''very likely'' caused by human activity, a phrase that translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is caused by man's burning of fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.
The report said no matter how much civilization slows or reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea level rise will continue on for centuries.
''This is just not something you can stop. We're just going to have to live with it,'' co-author Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., told The Associated Press in an interview. ''We're creating a different planet. If you were to come up back in 100 years time, we'll have a different climate.''
Sharon Hays, associate director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, welcomed the strong language of the report.
''It's a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers,'' she told The Associated Press in an interview in Paris.
Hays stopped short of saying whether or how the report could bring about change in President Bush's policy about greenhouse gas emissions.
The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.
However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.
Trenberth said scientists do worry that world leaders will take the message in the wrong way and throw up their hands. Instead, the scientists urged leaders to reduce emissions and also adapt to a warmer world with wilder weather.
''The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something,'' co-author Jonathan Overpeck at the University of Arizona said. ''I can tell if you will decide not to do something the impacts will be much larger than if we do something.''
The panel, created by the United Nations in 1988, releases its assessments every five or six years -- although scientists have been observing aspects of climate change since as far back as the 1960s. The reports are released in phases -- this is the first of four this year.
The next report is due in April and will discuss the effects of global warming. But that issue was touched upon in the current document.
------
On the Net:
Report: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb2007.pdf

Bush pressure seen on climate experts

Lawmakers received survey results of federal scientists that showed 46 percent felt pressure to eliminate the words “climate change,” “global warming” or similar terms from communications about their work.The scientists also reported 435 instances of political interference in their work over the past five years.

Bush pressure seen on climate experts
Lawmakers get survey of scientists, half of whom report political pressure

MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 2:07 p.m. CT Jan 30, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Democratic-controlled Congress on Tuesday stepped up its pressure on President Bush’s global warming strategy, hearing allegations of new political pressure on government scientists to downplay the threat of global warming.
Lawmakers received survey results of federal scientists that showed 46 percent felt pressure to eliminate the words “climate change,” “global warming” or similar terms from communications about their work.
The scientists also reported 435 instances of political interference in their work over the past five years.
Bush in his recent State of the Union address acknowledged that climate change needs to be addressed, but he opposes mandatory caps on carbon emissions, arguing that industry through new technologies can deal with the problem at less cost.
The intense interest about climate change comes as some 500 climate scientists gather in Paris this week to put the final touches on a United Nations report on how warming, as a result of a growing concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, is likely to affect sea levels.
The new allegations were made at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Waxman said he and the top Republican on the committee, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, had sought documents from the administration on climate policy, but were repeatedly rebuffed.
"The committee isn't trying to obtain state secrets or documents that could affect our immediate national security," said Waxman, opening the hearing. "We are simply seeking answers to whether the White House's political staff is inappropriately censoring impartial government scientists."
"We know that the White House possesses documents that contain evidence of an attempt by senior administration officials to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimize the potential danger," Waxman added.
Waxman said his committee had not received documents it requested from the White House and other agencies, and that a handful of papers received on the eve of the hearing "add nothing to our inquiry."
Nearly half cited editsThe Union of Concerned Scientists, a private advocacy group, and the Government Accountability Project, a legal-assistance group that represents whistle-blowers, sent out the survey to 1,600 scientists. Surveys were returned by 308 scientists. Not all answered every question, but the survey found that:
· 43 percent of respondents reported edits during review of their work that changed the meaning of their findings.
· 46 percent felt administrative requirements that impaired climate-related work.
· 67 percent said the environment for federal government climate research is worse now than five years ago.
The groups urged lawmakers to ensure “scientists’ constitutional right to speak about any subject in their private lives and allowing scientists to make ultimate decisions about the communication of their research.”
“The new Congress must act to prevent the continued interference with science for political purposes,” said GAP attorney Tarek Maassarani. “A good first step would be for Congress to amend current whistle blower protections to specifically protect the rights of federal government scientists.”
Hearing witnesses included a NASA official and a former senior official of the office that coordinates the government’s climate programs. That former official, Rick Piltz, quit his job in 2005, charging that scientists’ climate documents were being edited by political appointees to tone them down.
Administration officials were not scheduled to testify. In the past, the White House has said it has only sought to inject balance into reports on climate change.
At the hearing, Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, criticized the survey as self-selecting and flawed.
Allegations of political pressure have been at the center of a controversy involving James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the country’s top experts on climate change. Hansen had accused NASA of trying to keep him from speaking publicly about global warming, and the agency later backed off.
Climate legislation comingSince Democrats took control of Congress this month, there has been a rush to introduce climate legislation.
In the Senate, Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was holding an open meeting Tuesday for her colleagues to express their views on climate change, in advance of a broader set of hearings on the issue.
Among those to make comments were two presidential hopefuls — Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill. Both lawmakers favor mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, something opposed by President Bush, who argues such requirements would threaten economic growth.
Boxer has offered the most aggressive bill, one that is touted as reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by mid-century.
Obama and McCain are sponsoring a bill along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., that would cut emissions by two-thirds by 2050. Another bill, offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., would halt the growth of carbon emissions by 2030 and then is expected to lead to reductions.
All three would require mandatory caps on greenhouse gas releases from power plants, cars and other sources. They also would have various forms of an emissions trading system to reduce the economic cost.
In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to create a new select-committee to hold hearings and recommend actions on climate change. That proposal has been met with resistance from chairmen of committees with jurisdiction over various aspects of the matter, but nevertheless has indicated the new importance the issue has taken in Congress.
2007 MSNBC InteractiveThe Associated Press contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16886008/?GT1=8921

Climate Report: Global Warming Effects Could Be Seen in 10 Years

A Critical Year: U.N. Pushes for World Summit on Global Warming
Spurred by damning new reports and growing concerns about the effects of global warming, the United Nations wants to hold a summit on climate change in September.

Climate Report: Global Warming Effects Could Be Seen in 10 Years
Giant Mirrors to Deflect Sun Suggested as One Possible Solution
ABC Jan. 30, 2007 — - A major new report on global warming slated to be released Friday raises new fears that the earth's climate is changing faster than anyone thought possible.
Today, 500 of the world's top scientists are meeting behind closed doors to finish a landmark report on global warming, and the picture they paint is not pretty. They say changes in the climate could start happening within the next 10 years.
ABC News has obtained a preliminary draft of the upcoming report on climate change, which shows a grim outlook on the effects of global warming and emphasizes that scientists are more convinced than ever that humans are causing it.
"We're hoping that it will convince people, you know, that climate change is real," said Kenneth Denman, co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
'Sun Shade' in Space?
The report predicts an increase in heat waves, intense tropical storms and hurricanes, a sharp rise in sea level and continued melting of the world's snow and glaciers.
According to a British newspaper, American scientists want the final version of the report, which is due in June, to recommend new technologies called geo-engineering, some of which would block sunlight to the earth and combat global warming. One proposed idea recommends using giant mirrors to deflect some of the sun's rays getting to earth.
With NASA funding, University of Arizona professor Roger Angel is researching using small discs to create a giant "sun shade" in space.
"The effect would or could take our temperature back to pre-industrial level," Angel said.
But these ideas are still considered a last resort. Most scientists believe we need to focus on reducing carbon emissions before resorting to alternatives.
"I don't think geo-engineering is a magic bullet," said Mike MacCracken, head of Climate Institute's Climate Science and Impacts. "We just haven't found anything that's come close to being able to do anything that doesn't have other side effects that you just wouldn't want to have happening."
But we may already be at a point of no return. On Monday, Indonesia's environmental minister warned that rising sea levels stand to inundate some 2,000 of his country's more than 18,000 islands by 2030.
2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Connecting the Global Warming Dots

A review of Grow or Die: The Unifying Principle of Transformation (Paperback) by George T. Lock Land, extrapolated to the stagnant energy sector compliments Nobel Prize winner , Ilya Progogine's statement "As systems increase in complexity, their energy intensity and energy requirements to sustain life rise accordingly." Hydrocarbons ceased fitting the energy bill, became obsolete, years ago.

NYT January 14, 2007
The Basics
Connecting the Global Warming Dots
By ANDREW C. REVKIN (see graph at end)

If thought of as a painting, the scientific picture of a growing and potentially calamitous human influence on the climate has moved from being abstract a century ago to impressionistic 30 years ago to pointillist today.
The impact of a buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is now largely undisputed. Almost everyone in the field says the consequences can essentially be reduced to a formula: More CO2 = warmer world = less ice = higher seas. (Throw in a lot of climate shifts and acidifying oceans for good measure.)
But the prognosis — and the proof that people are driving much of the warming — still lacks the sharpness and detail of a modern-day photograph, which makes it hard to get people to change their behavior.
Indeed, the closer one gets to a particular pixel, be it hurricane strength, or the rate at which seas could rise, the harder it is to be precise. So what is the basis for the ever-stronger scientific agreement on the planet’s warming even in the face of blurry details?
As in a pointillist painting, the meaning emerges from the broadest view, from the “balance of evidence,” as the scientific case is described in the periodic reports issued by an enormous international network of experts: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, http://www.ipcc.ch/. The main findings of the panel’s fourth assessment since 1990 will be released in Paris on Feb. 2.
In the panel’s last report, issued in 2001, and in more recent studies reviewed for the coming report, various trends provide clues that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, probably caused most of the recent warming. A number of trends have been identified:
¶The global average minimum nighttime temperature has risen. (This is unlikely to be caused by some variability in the sun, for example, and appears linked to the greenhouse gases that hold in heat radiating from the earth’s surface, even after the sun has gone down.)
¶The stratosphere, high above the earth’s surface, has cooled, which is an expected outcome of having more heat trapped by the gases closer to the surface, in the troposphere. (Scientists say that variations in the sun’s output, for example, would instead cause similar trends in the two atmospheric layers instead of opposite ones.)
¶There has been a parallel warming trend over land and oceans. (In other words, the increase in the amount of heat-trapping asphalt cannot be the only culprit.)
“There’s no urbanization going on on the ocean,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
Another important finding comes from computer simulations of the climate system. While the several dozen top models remain rough approximations, they have become progressively better at replicating climate patterns, past and present.
In the models, the only way to replicate the remarkable warming, and extraordinary Arctic warming, of recent decades is to add greenhouse gases as people have been doing, Dr. Lawrimore said.
“Without the greenhouse gases,” he said, “you just don’t get what we’ve observed.”

Ice Shelf Breaks Off In Arctic

Ice Shelf Breaks Off In Arctic
CBS TORONTO, Dec. 29, 2006
(AP) A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a "major" reason for the event. The Ayles Ice Shelf — 41 square miles of it — broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic. Scientists discovered the event by using satellite imagery. Within one hour of breaking free, the shelf had formed as a new ice island, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake. Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and was amazed at the sight. "This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years," Vincent said. "We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead." The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic. They are packed with ancient ice that is more than 3,000 years old. They float on the sea but are connected to land. Some scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in Canada in 30 years and that climate change was a major element. "It is consistent with climate change," Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906. "We aren't able to connect all of the dots ... but unusually warm temperatures definitely played a major role." Laurie Weir, who monitors ice conditions for the Canadian Ice Service, was poring over satellite images in 2005 when she noticed that the shelf had split and separated. Weir notified Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa, who initiated an effort to find out what happened. Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as seismic data — the event registered on earthquake monitors 155 miles away — Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005. Copland said the speed with which climate change has effected the ice shelves has surprised scientists. "Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly," he said. Derek Mueller, a polar researcher with Vincent's team, said the ice shelves get weaker as temperatures rise. He visited Ellesmere Island in 2002 and noticed that another ice shelf had cracked in half. "We're losing our ice shelves and this a feature of the landscape that is in danger of disappearing altogether from Canada," Mueller said. Within days of breaking free, the Ayles Ice Shelf drifted about 30 miles offshore before freezing into the sea ice. A spring thaw may bring another concern: that warm temperatures will release the new ice island from its Arctic grip, making it an enormous hazard for ships. "Over the next few years this ice island could drift into populated shipping routes," Weir said. By Rob Gillies©MMVI The Associated Press.