The Inuit (aka Eskimos) are the first to really feel the effects of global warming. This WaPo article talks about how global warming is already affecting the ecosystem and their way of life.
As the Arctic ice sheet shrinks, polar bears are losing the ice floes they need for hunting, and hungry polar bears have become more of a threat to humans. Weather patterns are also changing:
In Pangnirtung[, Canada], residents were startled by thunder, rain showers and a temperature of 48 degrees in February, a time when their world normally is locked and silent at minus-20 degrees.
"We were just standing around in our shorts, stunned and amazed, trying to make sense of it," said one resident, Donald Mearns.
"These are things that all of our old oral history has never mentioned," said Enosik Nashalik, 87, the eldest of male elders in this Inuit village. "We cannot pass on our traditional knowledge, because it is no longer reliable. Before, I could look at cloud patterns or the wind, or even what stars are twinkling, and predict the weather. Now, everything is changed."
Metuq, the hunter, fears the worst. "The world is slowly disintegrating," he said, inside his heated house in Pangnirtung, a community of 1,200 perched on a dramatic union of mountain and fjord on Baffin Island. Seal skins stretched on canvas dried outside his home. The town remained treacherous. Rain in February had frozen solid, and there had been almost no snow to cover it.
"They call it climate change," he said. "But we just call it breaking up."
Comments (1)
As result of the warmer climate there might be more cloud cover in wintertime in the artic and sub artic regions. This prevents
cooling off and in summertime due to shrinking ice cover there is more heat absorption due to the reduced albedo effect.
This mechanism might explain the vigorous changes in the polar regions.
Posted by j.gommers | April 2, 2008