Arctic is warmer, greener, less icy: Study

Washington, Nov 17: The Arctic is warmer the past six years than at any time on record, with more green shrubs, less sea ice and rising temperatures in the frozen earth known as permafrost, scientists reported.

However, there are signs that some parts of the Arctic environment are returning to levels of lower temperatures seen in the mid-20th century, the researchers said yesterday.

Moving away from anecdotal accounts of starving polar bears and increasing numbers of forest fires, an international team of researchers found that conditions in the Arctic varied regionally, but generally showed an unprecedented warming.

''This is a region that is fighting back ... and consequently there are some things that show signs of going back to earlier climatological norms, what we saw from 1950 through 1980,'' said Jacqueline Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire.

James Overland of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said ''For the last six years, Arctic temperatures were above their average and this is a unique situation compared to the 20th century data that we have.

''So we're in a new situation, and this result is also supported by the loss of sea ice that's going on in the Arctic,'' Overland said at a telephone news conference, speaking along with Richter-Menge and others.

The indicators that are ''fighting back,'' as Richter-Menge said, include parts of the central Arctic Ocean and some wind patterns that have begun to seem more like what they were before an abrupt warming occurred in the 1990s.

Other indicators show a trend toward warmth.

For example, the extent of sea ice keeps decreasing, with September 2005 showing the least amount of Arctic summer sea ice since satellite observation started in 1979. Winter sea ice levels were at their minimum in March 2006, the report said.

The Arctic tundra turned green, mostly due to an abundance of shrubs, the scientists found, but at the same time forest vegetation was less green, possibly because of drought.

Permafrost temperatures continued to climb, the report said, though data on how thick the permafrost is were less conclusive.

Around the world, 2005 was the warmest year since instrumental record-keeping began, and the Arctic warming trend played a large role in this, the report said.

Reuters