KONRAD STEFFEN MAY BE THE PROPHET OF OUR CLIMATIC FUTURE

He has spent a dozen and a half years in Greenland where he has personally built and installed the weather stations to help the world’s scientists understand what is going on up there.

What he has found, and finds, may actually be worse than anyone thought possible. The studies on Greenland may be like the “canary on the icecap” ultimately showing what is to come in the world climate changes. The ice sheets here exert a tremendous influence on many of the Northern Hemisphere’s ecologic cycle.

Steffen tracked the average temperatures here over a 10 year period and found they had shot up 7 degrees F. This surge is so huge that it was hard to believe. But it’s true. Konrad’s data projected suggests that because of this surge, sea levels may rise as much as 3 feet by the start of the next century.

Some frozen areas of Greenland have always melted each summer, as he found. But as the global temperatures were rising his instruments have detected melting at higher elevations and latitudes. Instead of liquefying around the southern and eastern edges of Greenland, the ice pack is melting farther north and inland as well.

Another effect  that other scientists believe will happen is that the freed liquid water could desalinate the salinated water of the Gulf Stream. This would disrupt the movement of the North Atlantic waters that regulate weather over all of Europe.

Is this a disaster for coastal areas in the making? It seems it could be. There is no way to tell what changes in other parts of the globe could be affected, and to what extent either.

Arctic climatologist Konrad Steffen is personally committed to understanding where and how we will live, even though many of these changes may happen after he is gone. We must continue the studies.