ARCTIC PHENOMENON. 31 May 1947 Warming Of Climate Causes Concern.
ARCTIC PHENOMENON (1947, May 31). The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 – 1954), p. 13 (SECOND EDITION.). Retrieved June 22, 2020, from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/46315572#
ARCTIC PHENOMENON
Warming Of Climate Causes Concern
LOS ANGELES, May 30.—The possibility of a prodigious rise in the surface of the ocean with resultant widespread inundation, arising from an Arctic climatic phenomenon was discussed yesterday by Dr. Hans Ahlmann, a noted Swedish geophysicist at the University of California Geophysical Institute.
A mysterious warming of the climate was slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, Dr. Ahlmann said, and, if the Antarctic ice regions and the major Greenland icecap should reduce at the same rate as the present melting in the Arctic, oceanic surfaces would rise to catastrophic proportions and people living in the lowlands along their shores would be inundated.
He said that temperatures in the Arctic had increased 10deg. Fahrenheit since 1900—an “enormous” rise from a scientific standpoint. The waters in the Spitsbergen area in the same period had risen three to five degrees in temperature and one to one and a half millimeters
yearly in level.
“The Arctic change is so serious that I hope an international agency can speedily be formed to study the conditions on a global basis,” he added. He pointed out that whereas in 1910 the navigable season along western Spitsbergen lasted three months it now lasted eight months.