isopatch,
The following article assumes the news of thunder in the Arctic is another sign of global warming:
Arctic Thunderstorms Seen as Latest Signal of
Climate Change
The Associated Press
OTTAWA (AP) - The native people of the Canadian Arctic are
seeing something unknown in their oral history - thunder and
lightning.
Electric storms in the upper Arctic are among the evidence of
climate change being reported in a new study by the International
Institute for Sustainable Development, based in Winnipeg,
Manitoba. The release of the study this week coincides with a
U.N. conference on global warming being held in The Hague,
Netherlands.
The study focuses on knowledge among Inuits of changes in the
Arctic environment. Researchers spent a year visiting Sachs
Harbour on Banks Island in the Northwest Territories,
accompanying Inuit people on their hunting and fishing trips and
recording their observations.
"When I was a child, I never heard thunder or saw lightning, but in
the last few years we've had thunder and lightning," Rosemarie
Kuptana of Sachs Harbour, 1,440 miles north of Vancouver, said
Tuesday. "The animals really don't know what to do because
they've never experienced this kind of phenomenon."
The study lists various environmental changes, including melting
permafrost and thinning ice. And some more subtle changes, such
as the appearance of robins and barn swallows that allegedly
weren't previously seen so far north.
Because the Inuit - also known to some people as Eskimos -
spend their lives hunting and trapping outdoor, they perceive small
changes in the environment, scientist Graham Ashford said.
"They're telling us very clearly, it wasn't like this before, and they
give examples of how they know that it's different," he said.
Ashford urged the Canadian government to take a lead role in
negotiating an agreement to decrease greenhouse gas emissions
at the talks taking place in the Netherlands.
AP-ES-11-14-00 2144EST
While I agree that this is a sign of change, I have not studied this occurrence in the arctic enough to have an opinion on it. I will note that during some of the heavy winter storms we had here the winter of 95-96 we had thunder and lightning. A rare happenstance here during the winter, though not unheard of.
Best Regards,
Roebear |
