Global warming and UK Agriculture

   Optional online resources-- emphasizing EFFECTS

• "Soaring Sea Temperatures Destroy Belize Coral," Reuters News Service, 4 May 2000 -- The highest sea temperatures ever recorded, which scientists suspect were caused by global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, have destroyed coral in Belize for the first time in 3,000 years.
• "Scientists Warn: Deal With It, It's Too Late To Stop Global Warming," Seth Borenstein, Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 February 2000 (posted at Common Dreams News Center)
• "Is Global Warming Harmful to Health?" Paul R. Epstein, Scientific American, August 2000 -- Computer models indicate that many diseases will surge as the earth�s atmosphere heats up. Signs of the predicted troubles have begun to appear.
• "Shift In Great Lakes 'Seasons' May Reflect Warming Trend," Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Science Daily, 25 May 2000 -- A 139-year record of Great Lakes water levels shows a dramatic shift in the seasonal changes in water levels on the Great Lakes.
• "Arctic Action: The Facts," Greenpeace, March 2000 -- The western Arctic, including Alaska and northwestern Canada, is warming at a rate three to five times faster than the Earth as a whole. Significant impacts: sea ice; glaciers; forests; wildlife; indigenous people.
• "Melting of Earth's Ice Cover Reaches New High," Lisa Mastny, Worldwatch News Brief, Worldwatch Institute, 6 March 2000 -- Reports from around the world compiled by the Worldwatch Institute show that global ice melting accelerated during the 1990s-- which was also the warmest decade on record.
• "In the Arctic, Ice is Life--And it's Disappearing," Fidel Moreno, reprinted from Native Americas Journal (posted at Indigenous Environmental Network) -- Dramatic effects of warming on northern Native Peoples.
• "Study: Greenland Ice Cap Is Melting," Paul Recer, Associated Press, 20 July 2000 -- A warming climate is melting more than 50 billion tons of water a year from the Greenland ice sheet, adding to a 9-inch global rise in sea level over the last century. A NASA high-tech aerial survey shows that more than 11 cubic miles of ice is disappearing from the Greenland ice sheet annually; that's equal to about 1.25 trillion gallons and is enough to raise sea level by .005 of an inch annually.
• "Greenland Glacier Warming Feared," Rick Callahan, Associated Press, 5 April 2000 -- Greenland covers 840,000 square miles - 85 percent of which is covered by ice up to 2 miles thick. Its ice sheet is particularly vulnerable to ice melt because it is closer to the equator than the West Antarctic ice sheet at the South Pole.
• "Global Sea Level Rise To Inundate South Pacific Island This Weekend," Agence France-Presse, 16 February 2000 (posted at Common Dreams News Center) -- Global warming and the associated sea-level rise will threaten residents of Tuvalu this weekend, with tides forecast to be higher than most of the islands they live on.
• "Girding For a Sea Change: With Ice Thinning, Canada Claims a Northwest Passage," Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, 21 March 2000 (posted at Common Dreams News Center) -- The ice packs that block navigation across the top of the world are thinning as Earth's climate warms, raising the likelihood that commercial shipping and military vessels will soon routinely ply these long-frozen seaways.
• "Global Warming: Impacts," U.S. EPA, July 2000 -- Separate linked pages to health; water resources; forests; deserts, non-tidal wetlands; coastal zones; agriculture; fisheries; birds; national parks; state impacts, international impacts. Also impacts bibliography.

EPA Warns of Rise in Global Heartwarming (The Onion)

• "Effects of global warming clear in Canada Arctic," David Ljunggren, Reuters News Service, 20 April 2000 -- Abundant evidence of melting in "the land that never melts."
• "Climate Change Information Kit: Facing the Consequences," United Nations Environment Programme, February 1998 -- Separate pages concerning: Adapting to the impacts of climate change; Agriculture and food security; Sea levels, oceans, and coastal areas; Biological diversity and ecosystems; Water resources; Human health; Infrastructure, industry, and human settlements; Climatic disasters and extreme events.
• "Borehole Temperatures Confirm Global Warming," John Roach, Environmental News Network, 17 February 2000 -- Temperature readings taken from more than 600 holes drilled into Earth's surface confirm that a 500-year warming trend accelerated in the latter half of the 20th century.
• "Batten Down the Hatches, Sea Level is Rising," John Roach, Environmental News Network, 4 March 2000 
• "Sea-Level Rise & Global Climate Change: A Review of Impacts to U.S. Coasts," James E. Neumann and others, prepared for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, February 2000 
• "Arctic Warming Signals Dire Straits for Birds," Margot Higgens, Environmental News Network, 5 April 2000 -- Climate change could eliminate 50 percent of rare Arctic bird populations. Arctic water birds most threatened by the global warming include the critically endangered red-breasted goose, tundra bean goose, spoon-billed sandpiper and emperor goose. During the past century, global mean temperature increased by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit. Nowhere on the planet has the warming been more striking than in the Arctic, where average temperatures have risen as much as 2.7 F per decade since the 1960s.
• "A Warning From The North Pole," Harley Sorenson, San Francisco Examiner, 22 August 2000 (posted at Common Dreams News Center) -- "For the first time in 50 million years, visitors to the North Pole can see something extraordinary: water. The thick ice that covers the Arctic Ocean at the North Pole has melted, leaving a mile-wide stretch of water at the top of the world."
• "Glaciers Beating Retreat," Down to Earth, 30 April 1999, v. 7, n. 23, Centre for Science and Environment -- Himalayan glaciers, source of water for the innumerable rivers that flow across the Indo-Gangetic plains, are receding at a phenomenal rate. As they continue to recede, incidents of landslides, changes in river regimes and floods will increase. But only while the  glaciers last. If global warming is the cause of this decline, then we can expect glaciers to disappear one day. In the long  run, with large sections of these glaciers gone, the rivers will dry up.
• "Global Sea Level Rise to Inundate South Pacific Island this Weekend," Agence France-Presse, 16 February 2000 -- "Global warming and the associated sea-level rise will threaten residents of Tuvalu this weekend, with tides forecast to be higher than most of the islands they live on... Tuvalu has been outspoken in world forums on global warming, claiming its very existence is on the line."
• "Climate: More Global Warming Problems Loom," Gumisai Mutume, InterPress Service, 19 October 1999
• "Hot Nights in the City: Global Warming, Sea-Level Rise and the New York Metropolitan Region," Janine Bloomfield, Environmental Defense Fund Publication, June 1999.
• "'Trouble in Paradise' Ecological, Economic--Annan," United Nations, 28 September 1999 -- "34 member countries of the U.N. have organized as the Alliance of Small Island States [and called for more assistance to small islands, and, specifically]...  for more action by industrial nations to cut down on such forms of pollution as greenhouse gases derived from fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming. Warming, in turn, causes oceans to rise, making islands extremely vulnerable to violent weather. In Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific, the seas have destroyed roads and bridges and flooded burial grounds, dumping bodies into the ocean. The Maldives in the Indian Ocean face a threat of waves washing over 80 percent of its atolls."
• "Sea Level Rise Behind Tree Deaths On Florida's West Coast," Aaron Hoover, ScienceDaily Magazine, 15 October 1999 (adapted from a news release issued by University of Florida) -- "...cabbage palms and many other coastal trees are falling victim to saltwater exposure tied to global sea level rise."
• "Permafrost Thawing and the Western Arctic," Greenpeace, October 1999 -- "Permafrost is warming rapidly in both Alaska and western Canada because of increasing temperatures and deeper snow packs. The zone of continuous permafrost has moved about 100 kilometers further north over the last century in Canada. Research in Alaska has concluded that most of the zone of discontinuous permafrost is close to thawing."
• "Antarctic Ice Shelves Breaking Up Due to Decades of Higher Temperatures," ScienceDaily Magazine, 9 April 1999 -- " Two ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula known as the Larsen B and Wilkins are in 'full retreat' and have lost nearly 3,000 square kilometers of their total area in the last year."
• "Antarctic Ice Crumbling Rapidly," Alex Kirby, BBC Online Network, 8 April 1999
• "Antarctic Ice Sheet Steadily Melting, Study Finds," Maggie Fox, Reuters News Service, 11 October 1999 -- " A big chunk of Antarctica has been melting for thousands of years... scientists said. And unlike other areas of Antarctica that were melting, global warming was probably not to blame. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet  was 1,300 km (650 miles) more extensive than it is now in the Ross Sea Embayment... It has been retreating ever since the end of the Ice Age- - probably the last 10,000 years. ...Its complete collapse would raise the global sea level by 15 to 20 feet (5 to 6 meters)."
• "Study Blames Arctic Ice Decline on Humans," Environmental News Network, 7 December 1999 -- "Satellite data between November 1978 and March 1998 reveals that that the Arctic ice overall has shown a downward trend of 37,000 square kilometers a year. That means a loss of an ice chunk that exceeds the combined areas of the states of Maryland and Delaware."
• "Dramatic Thinning of Arctic Ice Found," Robinson Shaw, Environmental News Network, 16 November 1999 -- "The average draft of the sea ice (its thickness from the ocean surface to the bottom of the ice pack) has declined by 4.3 feet, or 40 percent, since the first measurements were made in 1958..." 

  
  

• "Greenland Ice Sheet Thinning Rapidly." Environmental News Network, 4 March 1999 -- "Researchers compared aerial surveys of the Greenland ice sheet taken in 1993 and 1994 with a similar survey taken last year. Their data, reported in this week's edition of the journal Science, indicated that parts of the ice sheet near the ocean thinned at a rate of more than 3 feet (1 meter) per year. While ice layers thickened by up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) in interior areas of Greenland during the same period, the net effect was a loss of ice mass for the whole area surveyed."
• "Behavior of World's Glaciers Fails to Prove Global Warming Theory," John Carlisle, National Center for Public Policy Research, Publication No. 235, February 1999 -- A contrarian view from the right-wing.
• "IPCC's "Summary for Policymakers: The Regional Impacts of Climate Change; An Assessment of Vulnerability," edited by Robert T. Watson and others, 1997
• "Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Selected Coasts and Islands," Stuart R. Gaffin, Environmental Defense Fund Report, November 1997 
•   "Effects of Rising Sea Level," Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, Host Ira Flatow, 21 August 1998 -- "Recent satellite data show that a glacier in the heart of Antarctica is shrinking rapidly. Other glaciers around the world, from Alaska to Africa, are also melting. How will this affect sea level? [And] what [are] low-lying areas are doing to prepare for sea level rise?"

  Other resources

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Thomas Detwyler maintains this page (tdetwyle@uwsp.edu)
Last updated 14 October 2000