Shirley Makalaniuk, age 13, of For William, On ., .for her questions

Is the earth really getting warmer?

There is a lot of evidence to show that the climate of the old earth is getting warmer. Of course, things have been steadily warming up since the last Ice Age. But, in the Arctic and surrounding regions at any rate, there seems to have been a speed up of this gradual improvement. Maybe it is mysterious warm spell in the seasonal climate. In any case, since the turn of this century, things have certainly been warmer in the northern regions and maybe other places as well.

For one thing, there has been less pack ice in the northern oceans during the past 20 years. The Arctic icefields are shrinking year by year and one has shrunk ten feet in ten years or so. Glaciers on mountain tops in other parts of the world, Asia, Africa and South America, have also shrunk.

Greenland and Iceland feel this welcome warm change most. There, growing seasons are longer and warmer. Crops now grow further north, all in the past 20 or 30 years. News of the improvement has spread around the animal world. Cod, a stranger in these waters, started to appear some 20 years ago. Now this food fish is so plentiful that fishing industries have been started. Migrating birds also took advantage of the situation. Skylarks went up from Europe to nest for the first time in Greenland some 20 years ago.