The news comes after a report released by the University of Colorado that shows that Arctic temperatures are at their warmest for at least 400 years. Paul Pearson, of the University of Bristol, in the west of England, and Martin Palmer, of Imperial College, London, reported in the magazine Nature yesterday that they used the evidence of plankton shells drilled from the seabed to estimate the acidity of the seawater over a span of time back almost to the era of the dinosaurs. Carbon dioxide dissolves in water to form a weak carbonic acid. They reasoned that the tissue of floating organisms would reflect the carbon dioxide levels of the world around them - and then hold that record locked in the fossilised shells. Other studies of more recent records have confirmed a picture of a rapid warming in the past two decades.
Winter is in retreat.
The growing season in Europe is 11 days longer than it was 35 years ago. Sea levels have crept higher throughout the century. The Arctic ice cover is in retreat, shrinking by an area the size of the Netherlands every year. It is also thinning, from more than three metres thick to less than two metres in 30 years. The Age Company Ltd 2000.