A team of researchers led by Brock Prof. Uwe Brand, Department of Earth Sciences, has just published a paper on the seawater composition and temperature change of Hudson Bay.

A team of researchers led by Brock Prof. Uwe Brand, Department of Earth Sciences, has just published a paper on the seawater composition and temperature change of Hudson Bay.

Published Sept. 10, 2014, the paper concludes that Hudson Bay seawater has been dramatically warming since the 1970s, for a total change in seawater temperature of 3.7 C. This degree of warming is about six times the 0.67 C increase observed during the past 100 years in global ocean sea-surface temperature (SST).

It suggests that polar regions are extremely sensitive indicators of climate change, and the recorded change in Hudson Bay SST is about double the postulated 2 C increase for polar regions (IPCC, ACIA).

According to the International Panel Climate Change (IPCC, 2001) report, “climate change in polar regions is expected to be among the largest and most rapid of any region on the Earth”, which will lead to sea surface warming, acidification, and sea-level rise.

Seawater warming has been postulated to be about 2-3 times that of the global oceans according to Arctic Climate and Assessment (ACIA, 2005).

The research comes out as the United Nations holds a Climate Summit Sept. 23.