Boulder scientists asked the Bush administration’s Arctic Research Commission on Thursday to push for more money for satellites, ocean buoys and other monitoring equipment to track the severe climate changes now happening in the Arctic.
The U.S. Arctic Research Commission — six presidential appointees — spent three days in Boulder this week, meeting with a dozen select scientific researchers who presented sobering evidence:
• Arctic permafrost is melting and will potentially release enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, accelerating global warming.
• Warm ocean currents are eating away at the toes of Greenland glaciers, letting the ice streams stretch and shrink and feed rising sea levels.
• Daily weather in parts of the Arctic is getting more difficult to predict.
• Increasing air pollution in the Arctic, including more mercury, could be doing more damage to ecosystems there.
Arctic commissioner and chairman Mead Treadwell said he appreciated the trends outlined by scientists from the University of Colorado, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Boulder is home to many of the U.S. scientists most vital in Arctic research, Treadwell said. “We want to be sure that the needs they tell us about are incorporated into our recommendations.”
Ted Scambos, at the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, said that among other monitoring equipment, researchers need ocean buoys that can track temperatures at the surface and much deeper to follow the fate of glaciers.
The Arctic Research Commission will report findings to the president’s science adviser and also to the leaders of federal agencies, such as NOAA and the National Science Foundation, he said.
In the past, the commission has emphasized the importance of satellite data-collecting tools, Treadwell said, and may have helped persuade the president to put an extra $90 million in NOAA’s proposed budget for next year.
Katy Human: 303-954-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com
