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GLAND, SWITZERLAND -- (Marketwire) -- 09/02/09 -- The new report, Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications, outlines dire global consequences of a warming Arctic that are far worse than previous projections. Peer-reviewed by the world's top climate scientists, this report reinforces that there's no time to waste in tackling climate change, because this meltdown will have major implications for people around the world - not just in the Arctic.

A funny thing happened just before a ceremony was to be held last week to commemorate a $3 million sea wall around the village of Kivalina way up on Alaska's Arctic coastline. The village, home to Inupiat natives for 4,000 years, is about to be washed into the sea, and the 1,800-foot wall is supposed to stop that. Alaska There's growing evidence that villages in the far North like Kivalina, Alaska, are being eaten up by the ocean due, at least in part, to global warming. (Northwest Arctic Borough,The Anchorage Daily News/AP Photo) But along came a modest storm, with winds of up to 40 miles per hour, and 160 feet of the wall washed out. The ceremony was canceled.

An unusually high proportion of thinner 'first year' ice in the Arctic raises the prospect of an acceleration in the loss of ice during the warmer summer months

A chunk of ice spreading across 18 square kilometers (7 square miles) has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic, scientists said Tuesday. He hasn't seen any ice in weeks. Plans to set up an ice camp in February had to be abandoned when usually dependable ice didn't form for the second year in a row. "Nobody on the ship is surprised anymore," Stern said. "We've been trying to get the word out for the longest time now that things are happening fast and they're going to continue to happen fast."

They'd come from the Arctic permafrost, the African plains and the jungles of Asia, but after five days of meeting, conferencing, dialoguing, blessing, praying and celebrating, the 400 attendees of the Indigenous People's Global Summit on Climate Change did not reach consensus on the how to move forward to combat the forces of climate change. Speakers over the week emphasized how much indigenous people have in common, whether they are from Borneo or Barrow, saying that they share a spiritual connection to the Earth, concern for plants and animal life and sense that for more than a century they have been left out of the decision-making process that is today eating away at the ground beneath their feet. They bear the brunt of erosion, changing migration patterns, rising sea levels, diminishing sea ice, drought, polluted air and water. But their common ground did not guarantee agreement on how to move forward.

In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.

Kirpotin describes an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years".

The effects of climate change are being felt by indigenous peoples from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Inuit livelihoods are disappearing as quickly as the snow, Caribbean Islands are at risk of drowning and the tribes of Borneo can only watch as their rainforests catch fire. Put simply indigenous peoples are at the frontline of climate change. There is a moral duty to protect those vulnerable from climate change, and action needs to be taken now.

It is most appropriate for Alaska to be hosting this week's Indigenous People's Global Summit on Climate Change here in Anchorage. Alaska's indigenous people know well a cruel irony of global warming: Those who are suffering the most from a warming climate are those who contribute least to the problem -- and they generally have the fewest resources to cope with the damage. Warming trends in the world's Arctic are undeniable. Sea ice is shrinking, giving storms more chance to pound unprotected shorelines and eat away at low-lying communities. Melting permafrost causes homes and other buildings to heave and twist.

In Alaska, climate change is creating an unforeseen humanitarian crisis. Arctic sea ice - which had protected communities from coastal erosion and flooding - is rapidly disappearing and signalling a radical transformation of this northern ecosystem. Scientific observations during the summer of 2007 documented a new record low. In 2006, the US government completed a $2.5m (£1.7m) seawall to protect the native village of Kivalina, located on an island in the Chukchi Sea. But on the day of the dedication ceremony, a storm surge partly destroyed the newly constructed sea barrier. One year later, the community was evacuated to protect inhabitants from a severe storm.

Holdren said temperatures should be kept from rising more than 3.6 degrees. To get there, he said the U.S. and other industrial nations have to begin permanent dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide pollution by 2015, with developing countries following suit within a decade. Those efforts are racing against three tipping points he cited: Earth could be as close as six years away from the loss of Arctic summer sea ice, he said, and that has the potential of altering the climate in unforeseen ways. Other elements that could dramatically speed up climate change include the release of frozen methane from thawing permafrost in Siberia, and more and bigger wildfires worldwide.

Overarching and Enduring Understandings Addressed in Climate Change Unit: Natural Cycles of Planetary Change Change is Detection through Pattern recognition Interlocking relationship between the Earth's Systems Overarching Questions Addressed in Greenland Melting unit: What are the results of global warming? Can the triggers of the Little Ice Age happen again? What are the methods that scientists use to study Earth processes? What are the harbingers and fingerprints of global processes? What are the drivers of climate? How are glaciers and ocean currents related?