Our melting mountain
In Australia The Canberra Times is has a feature article Our melting mountain.
ASK ALPINE ecologist Dr Ken Green about this year’s snow season in Mt Kosciuszko National Park, and his assessment is bluntly succinct.
“It never really got started. There’s just no snow up there in the back country,” he says. “It staggered from one shallow snowfall to the next, with everyone waiting for the big dump, but it never came.”Meteorological records show 2006 was one of the worst snow seasons on record at Kosciuszko, with the spring thaw “happening just like that” in the first week of September, says Green, snapping his fingers.
“It was the fastest thaw I’ve ever seen up here. We had warm days, but clear skies and cold nights for a few days. After the first warm night, everything went very quickly, with massive areas of snow melting and all the rivers pumping water.”
I happen to be in Canberra this weekend and the photos in the dead-tree version of this story are quite astounding. It’s vivid; Australia is losing its alpine peaks and the animals and plants that live there. The cycles of nature are being disrupted, for example the many creatures that feed off the fat-rich migratory Bogong moths are going hungry.
Green says, “There’s a simplistic view of climate change that fails to grasp the complexities of what’s happening.
“People think warming will happen gradually, but instead there’s a complex web of fluctuations and mismatches. Up in the boulder fields the snow has melted and the pygmy possums have used up their fat reserves and seed stores. But out west in Queensland, where the Bogong moths come from, they’re not getting the cue that it’s time to migrate. Their departure and arrival isn’t connected to conditions here.”
Climate change is disrupting long-standing patterns of nature and species are dying off at a rate previously unseen by the human race. It’s already too late to stop some of the damage, but if we don’t act now to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels the damage will accelerate. It’s our activity that causes CO2 to be pumped into the air. Please offset your CO2 emissions. Every little bit helps. — DS
Technorati Tags: Australia, Bogong Moths, climate change, CO2, eco, environment, extinction, global warming, Ken Green, Kosciuszko, meltdown, modelling, tipping point
