The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulate, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change
in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as
81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf-stream still very warm. Great
masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report
continued, while at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast
shoals of herring and smelt which have never before ventured so far north, are
being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is
predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities
uninhabitable.
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I apologize, I neglected to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post - 96 years ago.
Dang that pesky global warming.