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Mercury, September/October 2006 Table of Contents

Courtesy of J. White.

by James C. White II

This, like other recent ones, was a mild winter in Iceland.

The ground was fluid—a white liquid rushing past my booted feet, and after only a minute out of the vehicle, I could feel the wind's continual push making its way though my layers of Gore-Tex and down and polar fleece. I chanced a look up at the azure sky, the Sun perpetually low there this time of the year, and told myself, "Just think what a harsh winter is like."

Iceland in February is not everyone’s idea of a travel destination, yet a few years ago, my group of forty had come here to see glaciers and geysers and the northern lights. I was a co-leader of an Icelandic adventure trip—my first time in that small, beautiful country—and I took this opportunity also to see the effects of increased global temperatures. Real effects, too: on this particular day, we were nestled in a valley at the confluence of two glaciers, and where the snow only years ago would have been ten meters deep, the snow that winter was at most a meter.

Science magazines and journals have dedicated over the past several years greater coverage to the topics of polar science and global change. Naturally, one of the most interesting and alarming stories is the influence of upwardly creeping temperatures on the Arctic and Antarctic regions—not just because of the effects on the far south's Empire penguins or the far north's polar bears, but also the impact on humanity as ocean and sea levels rise. Own a home on Cape Cod? Enjoy camping on Cape Hatteras? Expect those waves to be lapping a bit higher each year. Want to sail the Northwest Passage? Scientific predictions imply you should wait about a decade for it to open completely in northern summer.

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