Warming Already Changing Newly Discovered New Guinea Mountain Habitat

[hatrack]

OSLO, Norway — Exotic species in a little-known "Garden of Eden" in the mountains of New Guinea island are under threat from global warming, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday. "A paradise world of undiscovered species and tropical glaciers in the mountains of New Guinea is disappearing faster than it can be explored," the British-based magazine said.

It quoted Michael Prentice, a climatologist at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire, as saying that temperatures in the highlands of the tropical island were rising far faster than previously thought.

Climate records compiled since the 1970s by mission stations, coffee plantations and mining companies "show a real step change, with warming of 0.3C (0.5F) every decade," he said.

That rate would make it among the fastest in the world. Scientists say global temperatures rose about 0.6C in the entire 20th century. It was unclear why the rate should be so fast on the island, shared by Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Prentice said glaciers around the 5,030-metre (16,500-ft) Mount Jaya, the island's highest peak, had been in retreat for a century and estimated that they ended about 300 metres higher than when last fully mapped in the 1970s.

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10031

[Inland]

1. We are so screwed.

Articles like this is why I don't hang out in the Energy/Environmental section. We are so screwed and I can't stand to think about it.

[Fridays Child]

2. A link to some more background on the area...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/02/07/papua.species.reut/index.html