Join an Earthwatch project the day after tomorrow!
The Day After Tomorrow is now in local cinemas across the nation. Hollywood has succeeded in serving up another tasty disaster movie with all the special effects needed to screen Armageddon.
But this time, it is not a an alien invasion or huge meteorite threatening to destroy us, but the effects of global warming; multiple hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, floods and the beginning of the next Ice Age.
The threats of global warming are not make believe, the Earth is warming up. If you left the cinema with a chill, then Earthwatch, the international environmental charity, can offer you a proactive opportunity to make a difference.
Global warming is being felt most dramatically at the edge of the Arctic, where the world's peat lands run in a broad strip around the globe. If current warming thaws the frost, the peat could release carbon dioxide and methane, and increase the atmosphere's heat-holding capacity by a factor of seven. What happens to the peat here could have huge consequences for the ecology of the entire planet.
Earthwatch needs enthusiastic volunteers to join the Climate Change at Arctic's Edge project in Manitoba. Volunteers will travel by snowmobile to measure snow pack density, hardness, and temperature, while identifying crystals, and collecting winter-active insects under the snow. All of this hard work will help Earthwatch scientists to monitor the changes to the regions eco system.
On the other side of the world, Queensland's unique rainforest is under threat from the potentially catastrophic impacts of global warming. Scientists predict that local temperatures will rise about 3.5 degrees centigrade in the next century, resulting in a nearly 50 percent extinction rate among endemic species and a dramatic decline in the distribution of surviving species.
As a volunteer on our Climate Change in the Rainforest project, you can help further our research by measuring the distribution and abundance of plants and animals in the rainforest and establishing long-term monitoring sites to assess the impact of climate change. Your findings will help to build better models to predict the effects of climate change on this fragile habitat and give us the knowledge that we need to help us minimise the impact.
Both of these projects operate throughout the year for a period of 2 weeks. If you would like more information about any of 140 scientific conservation research projects then please visit www.earthwatch.org/europe, email projects@earthwatch.org.uk or telephone 01865 318831 to speak to a Volunteer Programme Officer.