{"id":1599,"date":"2020-02-23T04:59:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T17:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2020-02-23T05:02:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T18:02:18","slug":"its-warmer-up-top-25-april-1953","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=1599","title":{"rendered":"IT’S WARMER UP TOP. 25 April 1953. “While the effect of the climate change is being felt all over the world, Mean winter temperatures throughout the Arctic and sub-Arctic are rising. At Spitsbergen, winter temperatures have risen 16 degrees since 1911. Within the past century, a rise of 2\u00bd inches in sea level at New York has been registered.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

IT’S WARMER UP TOP (1953, April 25). Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW : 1876 – 1954)<\/i>, p. 5. Retrieved February 22, 2020, from https:\/\/trove.nla.gov.au\/newspaper\/article\/134825108?searchTerm=antarctic%20warmer&searchLimits=#<\/a><\/p>\n

When grandfather snorts that it is not as cold as when he was a boy, don’t doubt him.
\nEvidence being compiled by scientists proves he is right.
\nNext month, Svenn Orvig, a husky young Canadian glaciologist, will settle down in a prefabricated igloo atop an 8000-ft. icecap.
\nAnd while Arctic storms rage outside his igloo he will jot down observations that might well substantiate that the roof of the world is getting warmer.
\nThose who make this study of climate their life work have found some amazing evidence that Canada is not only destined to become a more genial spot in which to live but that it has already become a more amiable place of residence than the Canada of only a couple of generations ago.
\nWhile Mr. Orvig may find times next May when he will be strongly disinclined to accept this fact his findings, along with those being compiled by a farflung band of hardy Arctic scientists, will
\nimmeasurably increase our knowledge of just what is happening to our climate and why Mr. Orvig is assistant to Colonel Pat Baird, director of the Montreal branch of the Arctic Institute of North America.
\nWhile the effect of the climate change is being felt all over the world, it is in the Arctic regions that some of the most interesting repercussions are being noticed.
\nThe great fact already proved in northern Scandinavia and in Arctic Canada is that the mighty glaciers and the vast ice sheets are receding rapidly. The edge of this main bulk of the Arctic ice
\nis retreating toward the pole and is already some hundreds of miles north of the point it
\nreached less than 50 years ago.
\nMean winter temperatures throughout the Arctic and sub-Arctic are rising.
\nAt Spitsbergen, winter temperatures have risen 16 degrees since 1911. While in the Yukon a few years ago, Prof. D. P .Kerr, climatologist in the University of Toronto’s geography department, noted winter temperatures there had risen 7.6 degrees since 1901.
\nTHE big question facing the investigators to-day is:<\/p>\n

What is happening to the ice-caps? Is the massive chunk of ice which sits on Greenland
\nshrinking? What about similar caps which crown parts of Baffin Island, Ellesmere Island and Devon Island?
\nIf they are diminishing-and evidence points strongly to this fact-an awesome prospect faces the world. With the melting of the icecaps, there will be a rising in ocean levels.
\nC. E.” P. Brooks, one of the world’s leading authorities on climate, has estimated that if all the ice sprawled over the rocky surfaces of Greenland and the Antarctic melted, it would raise the general level of the oceans by from 140 to 190 feet.
\nA total melting would mean the end as far as New York, London and many of the great cities of the globe are concerned.<\/p>\n

Already the oceans are rising.<\/p>\n

Within the past century, a rise of 2\u00bd inches in sea level at New York has been registered.
\nThe scientists are not unduly worried over this far-removed threat. Instead, they have turned their eyes to present day effects of the great climatic change.
\nIn Canada, important developments have occurred as a result of .the “warming up” process. Professor F. Kenneth Hare, head of McGill’s geography department, said one of the most important effects is the lengthening of the frost-free period in many parts of Canada. While, he points out.<\/p>\n

Too few studies have been made of this condition in Canada, it has, made possible an increase in the kinds and yields of crops in these areas.
\nA secondary development has been the advance of the forest into the tundra on the east coast of Hudson Bay.
\nHere again Professor Hare expressed his regret at the lack of adequate study of this development. If it is proved that the entire tree-line is marching north, it will give promise
\nto extended pulp and lumber operations in the years ahead.
\nThe retreat of the Arctic ice has opened up new fishing waters for Canada. A fantastic run of common cod into the ice-free waters of Davis Strait has brought unprecedented prosperity to the former seal hunters of Greenland.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Government is already experimenting with a commercial fishing venture in
\nUngava Bay, and is pinning high hopes on the possibility that cod fishing will prove to be the salvation of impoverished Eskimos in Ungavaland.
\nNOT all the effects of the climate change have been beneficial.<\/p>\n

In the past three years, Quebec has suffered a staggering loss in birch trees. Rene Pomerleau,
\nformer chief of the province’s forest protection service, says the loss three years ago amounted to 30,000,000 cords, or far more than lost to forest fires, disease and insects combined.
\nNo one can account for the death of Quebec’s birch. Professor Hare believes it is due to the subtle change in the climate.<\/p>\n

Mr. Pomerleau, a past president of the French-Canadian Society for the Advancement of Science, is inclined to agree. “It is not an insect or a parasite.” he observed. “It it had been any normal cause we would have discovered it years ago.”
\nBirch has important commercial uses. The yellow birch is extremely valuable to the veneer and flooring industries. Easily shaped, the white birch is useful in the production of common household articles. In Quebec, most of the spinning wheels are of white birch.
\nThe end of the birch, according to Mr. Pomerleau, has been “the worst calamity ever to hit our province.” Already, he noted, a number of large industries have been lost to Quebec as a result. He is fearful, as are other authorities, that the inexplicable blight has now spread into Ontario. He wonders whether all of Canada’s birch is doomed to extermination.
\nTHE birch has not been the climate’s only victim. All hard woods have been affected. Mr. Pomerleansays the ash, oak and maple are showing signs of illness.
\nIn southern Quebec, the growth of the hard woods has been mysteriously slowed.
\nTheir appearance is far from healthy. Faced with this economic disaster, Canada seems
\nstrangely complacent, Professor Hare feels.<\/p>\n

The Canadian climatologist, wishing to investigate the climate change, has little in the way of equipment to assist him. One of the most important aids in climate studies is the new radioactive Carbon-14 equipment. Only one piece of this apparatus is available in Canada. It is used in demonstrations at the University of Toronto.
\nAs is to be expected, there are those who scoff at the entire proposition. The greatest offenders in this respect have been the meteorologists, according to Professor Hare.<\/p>\n

In a speech before the Toronto branch of the Royal Meteorological Society, he said bluntly:
\nIn the 1920’s, it was fashionable to deny the existence of the remarkable fluctuation then in progress.<\/p>\n

Meteorologists were very apt to deny categorically that the obvious warming up had any lasting
\nsignificance. Even as a boy, I thought it was odd when 10 consecutive winters went by with temperatures above the so-called normal.
\n“To-day there is no more scepticism,” he continued.
\n“The reality of the present fluctuation is well established and debate concentrates on what caused the change and how long it will last.
\nWhile meteorologists now accept the “warming up” as a fact, they are doing little about it, he scolded.<\/p>\n

There is more than a germ of truth in the charge. The most import ant work on the change of
\nclimate in Canada has been done by glaciologists and botanists, and in the main by non
\nCanadians. The most significant work on the climate of Eastern Canada has been done
\nby Dr. H. C. Willett, an American.<\/p>\n

The detailed study of the tree rings in Quebec’s sub Arctic is the work of Dr. J. W. Marr, another American. Evidences of past climates are the grains of pollen recovered from bogs. Canada’s most important bog investigations have been undertaken by Scandinavian pollen analysts.
\nTHERE is little concrete evidence of what caused this climate change.
\nSome say it is tied in with the flow of the great ocean currents; others that it is conected with the circulation of air masses. Dr. Brooks argues that it is due mainly to variations of solar activity.
\nOne bright theory, designed to give Canada a tropical climate, dealt with a diversion of the Gulf Stream.<\/p>\n

This great river of warm water flowing through the Atlantic caroms off Newfoundland and heads for Iceland and England.<\/p>\n

It was suggested that, by means of nets, sand bars could be built up running south and east
\nfrom Newfoundland. Unable to push past this barrier, the Gulf Stream would then be deflected up the St. Lawrence river bringing, it was fondly imagined, the weather in which palm and breadfruit trees flourished.
\nOf this theory, Dr. Kerr said: “While the Gulf Stream exerts considerable influence in climate, it is not the only factor causing milder temperatures in Britain and North west Europe. A prevailing low of warm air from the Bermuda region towards Europe assists considerably in
\nthe amelioration of Europe’s climate.”
\nD R. KERR believes that part of the explanation for Canada’s warmer winters has to do with the
\npolar front. The polar front is the leading edge of the great mass of Arctic air which surges down from the north every winter.<\/p>\n

Prior to 30 years ago, Dr. Kerr recounted, the polar front extended across the southern U.S. States. In recent years its southward penetration has been much less.
\nThere would seem to be a definite connection between the retreat of the glaciers and the
\nretreat of the polar front. No one has yet been able to put his finger on the reason for it. “It all goes back to the heating of the sun, but that’s about all we can say,” was the way Dr. Kerr put it.
\nIt is too early yet to say whether the present warming up marks the ending of the world’s fourth ice age or whether it is but a temporary fluctuation.<\/p>\n

Dr. Willett, a climatologist from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently expressed the view that the present improvement of climate is near its end and that the hemisphere’s mean
\ntemperatures will be falling for the next 10 or 15 years.
\nNEVILLE RICHARDSON.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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