Salon: Baked Alaska

In the Arctic, where flowers are madly blooming, trees are growing to mutant sizes and the snowpack is thinning, researchers are getting an incontrovertible view of global warming.

By Rebecca Clarren

TOOLIK LAKE, Alaska -- Thin bright light stretches taut across the late afternoon sky. At the U.S. Arctic Research Station, 135 miles south of the Arctic Ocean, an expanse of golden tundra rolls unhindered toward the craggy mountains of the Brooks Range. Silver rivers and lakes, blueberries and umber hills grace the landscape.

At the moment, University of Alaska ecologist Syndonia "Donie" Bret-Harte is not enjoying the view. As she stares at the tundra carpet with concern, her husband, Peter Ray, a retired Stanford professor of plant physiology, yells from up the hill. "Hey, Donie, you've got to come look at this. The eriophorum are efflorescing again." Translation from science speak: The flowers are blooming.

It's the second time they've blossomed this year. Given an atypically long season of warm weather, the flowers are confused, thinking spring is here again.

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While it's unlikely the four horsemen of the apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride, global warming will likely have an enormous and dire impact on human populations in the Arctic and beyond. Already, native communities that dot Alaskan shorelines are seeing villages crumble. Waves, unhindered by large ice chunks, now swell and break against the shore with a ferocity never seen before. Banks are eroding and high water has consumed so many homes and buildings that two villages have been forced to move inland.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/10/toolik/index.html

Good post