Source: Democrat and Chronicle
URL: https://www.newspapers.com/image/135932225/?terms=arctic%2Bice%2Bmelting
Date: 10/03/1955
Event: "... huge areas of ice in the Far North are melting"
Credit: Democrat and Chronicle
DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE - MAR 03, 1955
Melting Ice Warming Up World
By Frank Thompson
BOSTON, March 9 (INS) - A famed Arctic explorer reported today the world is getting warmer - but that's not an unmixed blessing.
Adm. Donald MacMillan, an 80-year-old veteran of 30 trips to the Arctic, said that huge areas of ice in the Far North are melting, bringing warmer weather. But he added that the process also may bring a flooding threat to some parts of Eastern seaboard cities.
MacMillan explained in an interview: "There are now 6 million square miles of ice in the Arctic. There once were 12 million square miles. Another thing, almost every glacier, with one exception, has retreated - going back into the hills - is smaller than it was. Because of the fact the glaciers have gone back into the hills fewer icebergs will be in the North Atlantic. Icebergs drift south in the Arctic current in the North Atlantic... fewer icebergs will mean warmer temperatures."
MacMillan said that the melting process is going on in Greenland, which has 700,000 square miles at the center. He warned: "If it continues to melt it will raise the level of the oceans 100 to 150 feet and on the Atlantic seaboard cover lower areas of such low lying cities as Boston, New York, Baltimore and Washington." He did not say when those cities can expect the worst.
MacMillan, an erect, 5-foot-6-inch man with flashing eyes and thinning gray hair, made his first Arctic voyage in 1908 with Adm. Robert Peary, discoverer of the North Pole. MacMillan soon will be leaving on his 31st exploration, to uncharted fjords of Baffinland. He reported these additional bits of evidence that the Arctic, and much of the world, is getting warmer: "I noticed this year that the Eskimos were catching codfish 12 degrees from the North Pole." There were no codfish there in 1913-1917. Birds and animals are going north, farther and farther, each year. Southern birds, for instance, now are seen off Massachusetts.
"When I first went north in 1908 many of the glaciers were living, moving glaciers. Now they are dead glaciers." MacMillan said he believes the world is "at the end of the fourth great glacial period." And for those looking far, far into the future, MacMillan said: "We'll probably have it (another glacial period) again. History repeats itself."