Arctic Warming Up To 10 Times Faster Than Previously Thought

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NUUK — "A changed world, with robins instead of polar bears, trees instead of tundra and a busy, ice-free shipping lane through the Northwest Passage. A place where sunburn and new diseases are growing hazards and the very core of the Inuit way of life is threatened — that’s the scary and stark portrait of tomorrow emerging from an Arctic Council report on climate change in the Arctic.

The 1,400-page Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, with findings from 250 experts, will be released in Iceland on Nov. 9 at a special symposium to be held before the Arctic Council meets later that month. But, last weekend in Nuuk, a gathering of Arctic parliamentarians got a troubling preview of the environmental, health and social impacts that an upward swing of temperatures in the North will cause.

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Examples of warming trends in the Arctic environment are already numerous: a 15-degree increase in annual winter temperatures in Yakutsk, Siberia, 143 villages threatened by storm surges in Chukotka and Alaska, and thinning ice, glacial melt and shorter, warmer winters throughout the Arctic basin. Annual average Arctic temperatures are increasing more rapidly than those elsewhere, up to five to ten times faster.

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Impacts on health in the circumpolar world will follow - more accidents due to poor travel conditions, skin rashes, new diseases such as the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, outbreaks of illness related to poor water quality from melting permafrost and contamination from sea water and pollutants."

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http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/40910_01.html