Real Climate Records

Scientists have confirmed the fact that the Arctic regions around Spitzbergen are warming up at the rate of approximately one degree in every two years.

Since 1910, when observations first started in those regions, the cumulative rise of winter temperature has amounted to nearly 16 degrees.

Such a profound change has been attended by new and strange phenomena over the whole area surrounding the Polar basin. It has been found that the Polar iceflelds are receding gradually northwards, while soil which at one time remained solidly frozen throughout the year now undergoes partial thaw during the Arctic summers.

In the Barents Sea area where, during earlier observations, only small patches became free from ice, large spaces of open water now occur at frequent intervals. Ice-breakers and other vessels which regularly make journeys to the far North are now able to penetrate with comparative ease into regions which could not be reached twenty years ago.

There has been a gradual drift northward of several kinds of fish into areas once completely ice covered.

The milder conditions have not been confined to areas north of the Russian coast. From parts of Greenland comes evidence of a higher winter temperature, with considerably less snow, than was the case in the early part of the twentieth century. When this warming-up process was first noticed, says a writer in the “Evening Standard,” scientists were inclined to attribute it to a temporary increase in the volume of the North Atlantic Drift, or even to a change in the course of the river of warmth, but subsequent events point to this theory being only partially correct.

Parts of the Polar regions not affected by the warm waters have grown decidedly warmer in the last 20 years, while temperatures have become higher in the far north-east of Siberia and well inland—remote from oceanic effects.

In support of the belief that the Atlantic river of warmth cannot be wholly responsible for the widespread rise in temperature there are the trustworthy records obtained by Mr. J. B. Kincer, of the Weather Bureau at Washington, which show that the rise in temperature at places as far apart as Canada and Africa, South America and Asia, Bombay and Santiago (Chile) has been well marked since the middle of last century.

It is possible that the world as a whole is becoming warmer. One scientist puts forward the theory that an increase in carbon dioxide (due to the huge amounts of coal being used) may be responsible for such a change, while astronomers look to the sun for an explanation.

Quite apart from any fluctuations in the sun’s actual output of radiative energy, it is possible that the warmth received from the sun may vary from time to time due to the earth passing through regions of space in which meteoric dust is unevenly distributed.