Cloud Mysteries of the Far North

Scientists in Eureka, Nunavut Territory, are trying to figure out a mystery in the local clouds. Less than a thousand miles from the North Pole, they're finding droplets of water in the clouds when, that far north, they should be ice particles. From the Associated Press:

"With NASA reporting that 2005 was the warmest year on record worldwide, the debate over global warming marches on, but not here. The American and Canadian scientists at the Eureka Weather Station in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut, like the Inuit who are seeing their native habitat thaw, are beyond questioning the existence of climate change.

"'If we compare the debate over the theory of evolution with the debate over the theory of global warming - global warming's a whole lot more certain at the moment,' said Jim Drummond, a University of Toronto physics professor and chief investigator for the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change.

"...water clouds are more likely to warm the Arctic atmosphere than ice clouds, since the liquid clouds retain more heat radiated by the Earth's surface. "This means that the ice-to-water ratios in clouds may be very important in controlling the Arctic surface temperatures and how it melts."

"In Nunavut, the melting is keenly felt. 'In the old days, we used to have 10 months of winter; now it's six,' said Simon Awa, an Inuit leader and deputy minister for the environment of Nunavut who was on the trip to Eureka. 'Every year we're getting winter later and later.'

"For these 155,000 people of Canada, Greenland, Russia and the United States, it means less time to hunt caribou, walrus and polar bear. Studies show that average winter temperatures have increased as much as 7 degrees in the Arctic over the last 50 years. The permafrost - ground that is continually frozen for at least two years - is thawing, imperiling polar bears and forcing other animals to migrate farther north.

"The walrus have moved farther away, said Awa. 'So you're taking more time out, away on the land hunting.' Meanwhile, families back home are forced to eat store-bought food that is costlier and less healthy.

"'The majority of the world's population hasn't really felt the global warming,' said Awa. 'But right now in the Arctic and in Nunavut, we're really worried because it's already affecting us. We are a thermometer of the world for what could happen.'"