Our children’s Mother Earth

By Panay News -Thursday, July 14, 2022

BY KLAUS DÖRING

MOTHER Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth Mother) is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of the mother.

The healthier our ecosystems are, the healthier the planet – and its people. Restoring our damaged ecosystems will help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent mass extinction

Yes, it’s again the topic we should really think about. Also here in the Philippines. Ok, here’s a new string of examples, my dear readers. But, don’t expect good news.

Greenland, the great island is being called the Land of Ice being on fire. Why? A recent report says the Arctic may be ice-free by 2040. The Antarctic is also melting, albeit far slower, and in a less regular pattern.

The Arctic is melting much faster than expected, and could even be ice-free in summer by the late 2030’s, a report from the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program suggests. Previous studies had forecast an ice-free North Pole in summer by mid-century. Wow.

While the outlook is bleak for the Arctic, there is a silver lining for the Antarctic: As I said before, the ice is melting at a slower rate than previously thought. Although glacier flow has increased since the 1990’s, scientists from University of Leeds have found the melting rate to be only around a third of what was previously projected.

Operation IceBridge studies the processes that link the polar regions with the Earth’s climate system. Rapidly changing polar ice means researchers need to use highly sophisticated airborne technology to measure annual changes in thickness and movement – onboard a retrofitted 1966 Lockheed P-3 aircraft.

 But the Antarctic is still melting. And a rapidly advancing crack in its fourth-largest ice shelf could soon see one of the largest icebergs ever recorded in human history break off into the sea.Scientists agree that global warming causes both the ice in the North and the South Pole to melt. Air temperatures are climbing, and so are water temperatures. This makes the ice melt faster. The period of winter where the water is actually cold enough to freeze is getting shorter, which means ice floes are getting smaller.

Honestly folks, it really scares me although experts say it is too early to draw firm conclusions linking the fire to climate change because no long-term data is available to put the blaze in context. However, unusually warm and dry conditions this year could have been a factor.

Let’s face this: “It’s unprecedented in the short 18-year observational record,” Jason Box, a climate scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said in an interview with German TV yesterday. . “We also know that temperatures in Greenland are probably higher [than they have been over] the last 800 years.” Wow again!

Although the origin of the blaze is unclear – with lightning and a stray cigarette as possible suspects – what is clear is how it has been spreading across remote areas of grassland and low shrub. Greenland is indeed getting greener and greener. It conjures images of white, frozen expanses. But Box says global warming means it’s getting greener all the time. “There’s a shorter snow-cover season, and that allows the plant life to expand,” he explained.

The Arctic is heating up around twice as fast as the global average. At the same time, rainfall around the world is also increasing – and that trend as well is more present in the Arctic. “More rain is a widespread symptom of climate change,” Box said. “You get more precipitation – and where you get the biggest increase is in the Arctic.”

For Greenland, warmer, wetter conditions mean more vegetation – which, seemingly paradoxically, could be a factor for the fire. And my next question is: what will be the impact of these fires on the ice sheet and surrounding areas?

Fact is: Greenland’s ice sheets melt, which contributes to sea level rise. And if we add the North- and South Pole and their vanishing ice and snow and all other oceans worldwide?  Yes, also the Philippines are in danger. Not this year or next year. But … !