UMass Amherst Climate Change Expert Available to Speak on Changes in Arctic Sea Ice and Polar Bear Decision

May 14, 2008

Contact:

Raymond Bradley 413/253-7058

AMHERST, Mass. – The U.S. Department of the Interior is deciding whether polar bears should be listed as threatened by climate change under the Endangered Species Act, a decision that could impact drilling for petroleum in Alaska and force federal agencies to react to greenhouse gas emissions.

Raymond S. Bradley, director of the University of Massachusetts Climate System Research Center, is available for expert comment on how climate change is affecting arctic sea ice, a major factor in the decline of polar bears, who use the sea ice as their hunting grounds.

Bradley was one of several researchers from UMass Amherst who contributed to reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which earned the panel the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with environmentalist and former vice president Al Gore. Research by Bradley and Michael E. Mann, now a faculty member at Penn State University, detailed substantial human-induced rates of global warming in a 1999 paper that was the major highlight of the third IPCC assessment report.

Bradley has studied climate change across the globe, from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic to the mountains of South America. He has written or edited 11 books on climate change, and authored over 120 articles on the subject.

#300-08

E-mail story to a friend Printer-friendly version