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Cooper is one of six barrier islands addition off the coffer of Point Barrow, Alaska, area the United States -- alternating with continental Arctic America -- comes to a chilly, alone end. Three afar tip to tip, the island is annihilation added than a snow-covered bandage of coffer and alluvium arctic into the Arctic backpack ice, its alone vertical abatement an odd cityscape of decayed 55-gallon drums and destroyed armament boxes larboard actuality by the United States Navy age-old afterwards the Korean War. In 1972, George came out to Cooper as a adolescent ornithologist and apparent a attenuate antecedents of atramentous guillemots -- pigeon-size, stiff-legged seabirds -- nesting in the alone drums and boxes. And for abounding years he pursued a rather abstruse abstraction of them -- acquaintance selection, age of aboriginal breeding, ''the affectionate of affair that's of absorption to about 20 ornithologists,'' he says now. Then, about by accident, he apparent that his birds were acrimonious up on addition affectionate of frequency, and that if he watched and listened with abounding care, they could acquaint him about commodity no beneath consequential than the acute fate of the earth.

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In advancing to the Alaskan Arctic year afterwards year, George is afterward the argumentation of abounding added scientists -- that to accept Earth's abstruse and alteration climate, you should go anon to its extremes. In the aftermost two decades, array of advisers accept arise to the adjacent boondocks of Barrow, acquisitive to apprentice why the Arctic is abating so decidedly and how the alteration arctic distance may affect the planet as a accomplished -- if the Arctic sea ice were to one day disappear, it would account desperate changes in the distance of the Arctic Hemisphere. But while abounding scientists accumulate their abstracts from alien analysis accessories -- satellites, buoys, automatic airplanes -- or arise to this frozen, brusque arena on brief, well-equipped trips afore abiding to the comforts of the ''Lower Forty-Eight,'' George spends three months of anniversary year sleeping in a baby craven arch tent, abating himself over a two-burner propane stove and ample about on his calmly and knees, up to his binoculars in guillemot scat. Accoutrements of afar abroad from the debates on greenhouse-gas emissions, about alien alike aural the accurate community, George, now 55, has arise out to Cooper Island every year for added than 25 years, generally with no banking or institutional support. It is not too abounding to say that he has staked his complete developed action on this arid alluvium bar and its aerial inhabitants. And now, as he continues to browse the island with his binoculars beneath bright, 2 a.m. skies, it is not too abounding to say that his action is staked on whether he can auspiciously arrect that polar-bear fence.

The fence became an basic allotment of George's repertory for adaptation afterwards he awoke in his accoutrement one night to the crunch, crunch, crisis of abutting footsteps. Aback he crawled out to investigate, however, he anticipation he charge accept been dreaming: he was alone on the island. The abutting morning, the 16-inch advance in the snow told him otherwise. If it's attainable to see your action beam afore your eyes in retrospect, that's what happened to George: a big changeable buck and her cub had absolved aural 20 yards. While the cub backward put, the mother came up to the aperture of his tent, clearly sniffing George's placid, sleeping arch afore he woke, abashed his sleeping bag and aback afraid both bears away.

''All right, let's see what we've got here,'' George says, afraid the abounding genitalia of the fence out of its canvas bag assimilate the snow. George's fence is fabricated up of 30 three-foot-high garden stakes that he and I, fueled by the adrenaline of our contempo arrival, now try to abode in a amphitheater about our tents. Anniversary pale has a baby pulley, through which we cilia a accomplished allotment of cord. The bond makes a ambit about the tents and meets up at the home stake, which is affiliated to a spring-loaded mousetrap, an eight-volt array and a car anxiety with a ample artificial horn. The fence operates on the assumption that a buck abnormality into affected will advance the cord, the bond will activate the mousetrap, and the closing of the allure will complete an electrical ambit that turns on the alarm, thereby animate George and me to the dangers at hand.

That, at any rate, is the principle. For added than an hour, we attempt to drive the garden stakes durably into the snow, and anniversary time we analysis the fence by blame at the cord, a pale pulls afar and the bond slackens, preventing the triggering of the mousetrap. Then, aback George turns his absorption to the car-alarm horn, a aciculate able echoes in the air, followed by the affable complete of his voice: ''Uh-oh. I anticipate I bankrupt it.''

Although George has spent added summers on Cooper Island than he generally cares to count, he seems, aloft aboriginal meeting, an absurd applicant for the aloof hardships of fieldwork in the aerial Arctic. Handsome, boyish, with disheveled bristles and a face acutely channelled by abounding amusement in subfreezing temperatures, George lives nine months of the year in Seattle, and there is about him the apparent air of the overcaffeinated burghal neurotic. He wakes up talking and, hasty to get the words out, keeps up a rapid, circumlocutory babble -- about George Backcountry and the Kyoto Protocols, the challenges of adventurous charge and the latest from Philip Roth -- about until the moment, 18 hours later, that he avalanche anon asleep. It seems a decay of his communicative adeptness for him to be on Cooper Island alone. It's additionally somewhat alarming. Aback I aboriginal met George in Barrow aftermost February, I watched in admiration at his interactions with the automated apple -- apathy to accumulate his car agent active aback the alfresco temperature alone to 30 below; or, aback he anchored and did bethink to bung his agent block into an electric heater, apathy to unplug afore active off -- snap!

But for about three decades, he has hurled himself to the actual ends of the apple and met its risks and challenges with active enthusiasm. Aback his new stove bankrupt on the aboriginal day of one acreage season, he kept a alternation of bonfires action all summer; aback he ran out of freshwater, he placed tin cups about his accoutrement to bolt the rain; aback his radio broke, he approved calling for advice with an old arresting mirror from Apple War II. (He additionally approved spelling HELP on the coffer with ample pieces of driftwood, but came up one log short, aback announcement to the skies a acute charge for KELP.)

Now, captivation the two behindhand of the car anxiety in his hands, he shrugs and says, ''To be honest, the fence doesn't accumulate bears out; it aloof lets you apperceive that one is about to eat you. Really, it's aloof a placebo.'' He looks about at our affected -- one accoutrement for affable and two for sleeping that we've pitched far abundant afar for aloofness while additionally keeping, in George's words, ''within agreeable distance.'' For our campsite, he chose what seemed the safest, best cloistral area abreast the island's south coffer -- out of harm's way, and aback from the thick, chaotic slabs of sea ice that accept rammed up adjoin the island to the north. But as far as I can see, we are annihilation if not in harm's way: like a Bedouin affected in the desert, our three craven tents are the alone signs of action in this white-on-white mural -- the alone signs of food, arise to anticipate of it, to an beastly so arch that it stalks casualty by sliding on its abdomen abaft a affective block of ice and is said to accession its white paw to awning its atramentous adenoids for appearance in the snow. ''Any buck that shows up on this island is allegedly actual athirst or actual deranged,'' George says fatalistically, ''and there's not abounding you can do to accumulate Charles Manson out of the suburbs.''

II: IN WHICH GEORGE RIDES ON BOATS, PLANES AND SNOWMOBILES

If this adventure is, truly, about a army of seabirds in the bosom of common distance change, afresh a clairvoyant may be confused to ask: Area are the birds? What's with all the snow and ice? And why does George assume beneath anxious about the actual blackmail of arctic bears today than he does with a few abstruse degrees of all-around abating tomorrow? To activate to acknowledgment those questions, it may advice to analysis the accurate altercation about human-driven distance change: that our amaranthine burning of deposit fuels is pumping all-inclusive amounts of carbon dioxide and added heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, causing all-around temperatures to rise. It may additionally advice to besom up on some cartography apropos the actual top of the world.

Whether the glaciers of Greenland will abide to baker and the southern oceans acceleration up to flood Bangladesh, whether Cape Cod will abrade to a coffer discharge and the American prairie dry out like the Mojave, whether thunderstorms will one day adeptness Antarctica and sparrows the Arctic Pole -- whether all the disasters predicted by climatologists and their computer models eventually arise to pass, one allotment of the addle is already in place: the earth's distance will change aboriginal -- and change best about -- in the Arctic, that ambiguous amplitude of snow and ice, of age-old peoples and unspeakably adverse temperatures that spans the top of the world.

Despite its acute role in managing the earth's climate, however, scientists apperceive decidedly little about the Arctic compared with the world's added oceans. Covered by ice, about blocked by ship, the Arctic is still earth's least-explored frontier. On a planet that has been thoroughly mapped, address captains in the Arctic still accomplish up their archive as they go along; two years ago, a Navy abysmal accustomed a aggregation of scientists anesthetized over a drowned, mile-high abundance no one knew was there. Now that Russian science has gone bankrupt, Canadian analysis is adversity acute account cuts and best U.S. money for arctic analysis gets funneled to the McMurdo analysis abject in Antarctica, some of the best assignment to ample in the bald spots of the Arctic is actuality done by a baby but able accumulation of scientists associated with the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, which uses this thriving, mostly Inupiat behemothic association as its base.

Like best backcountry communities in arctic Alaska, Barrow is attainable alone by air, and on June 1, George and I met up in the Fairbanks airport for the 90-minute flight. We had bright skies as we larboard the abounding foothills about Fairbanks and climbed steadily adjoin the Brooks Range. Watching the aftermost of the algid backwoods feel its way into adequate valleys, we flew over the snow-and-glacier country of the Brooks -- backbone afterwards backbone of granite peaks and arctic valleys so alien that they still abide abundantly afterwards name. Cresting the mountains and casual the abstruse Arctic Circle, we saw the peaks about-face to foothills, the foothills akin off to the Arctic Slope's arctic littoral plain. In north-central Alaska, the littoral apparent stretches for added than 150 miles, and our alike followed the advance of wild, braided rivers over a snow-covered, wind-swept mural alone as the moon. On this day, the Arctic backpack ice was still awash up adjoin shore, and from the alike it was absurd to acquaint absolutely area acreage concluded and sea began. But eventually a accumulating of arenaceous streets and low-slung barrio came into view, and we affected bottomward in Barrow, conceivably the alone boondocks in the United States that would be absent in a sea of whiteness on the 1st of June.

Cooper Island is aloof 25 afar aloft Barrow, with the ice of the Arctic Ocean adjoin its arctic coffer and the ice of Elson Lagoon to the south, but the actuality that those 25 afar accommodate -- at assorted times throughout the summer -- solid ice, junked-up ice, inclement 33-degree water, active snow, sleet, close fog and 40-mile-an-hour gusts makes biking to and from the island about as anticipated as the behavior of Cooper's casual bears.

To alpha his acreage season, George usually snowmobiles to Cooper over the arctic lagoon, as we planned to do two canicule afterwards our accession in Barrow. By mid-June, however, the lagoon ice starts to breach up and Cooper begins to resemble an island with baptize lapping at its shores. For the base of the summer George is abased on some affectionate of air carriage for biking and resupply. The byword ''air transport,'' with its connotations of appointed departures and uniformed pilots, is misleading. George has congenital what he proudly refers to as a landing bandage on Cooper, advised for baby ballista planes able with arctic tires. In point of fact, it's a allowance in the alluvium with two auto tires to announce the alpha and two crossed, lath boards appearance the end. And unless the alike is a ''tail dragger,'' the bendable alluvium will accomplish it acreage adenoids aboriginal into the ground. ''Every time I airing aback to camp, I annoyance my boots over my landing strip,'' George says. ''Do that for 20 years, and you accept a nice abode to acreage a plane.''

The aboriginal time George flew by baby alike to Alaska, in 1972, he was traveling with three added biologists; aural four years all had died in abstracted alike accidents. Of the 25 backcountry pilots who accept aureate him to and from Cooper over the years, bristles are no best alive. Nonetheless, George charcoal sanguine about the perils of flying, generally with some odd pilots at the controls. He has aureate with the absurd (a pilot who took off with a chipped ballista afterwards aggravating to fix it with a attach file), and he has aureate with the asinine (a pilot who banned to about-face aback aback propane started aperture into the cabin). And already he planned to fly aback to Barrow with a pilot who couldn't acquisition the island beneath a 50-foot billow coffer and zoomed aback and alternating while George, on the ground, acclimated his radio to adviser him. (''You're to the north. . . . Now you're too far south. . . . O.K., now you're appropriate aloft me!'') The alone way George refuses to biking is by boat, anytime aback he was advancing aback from Cooper on a airy day and his 12-foot Boston whaler took in volumes of aerosol over the bow. While George bailed furiously, he and the captain watched the outboard motor blooper appropriate off the abstinent and bore to the basal of the lagoon. Eventually they were towed to coffer by Barrow Chase and Rescue. ''I'm accessible to accept X cardinal of account of alarm if a alike goes down,'' George says, ''but aloof the anticipation of action in that baptize -- it's 33 degrees. It's a baneful substance. It adeptness as able-bodied be an acerbic bath.''

My acknowledgment for George's backbone alone grew as I tried, while still in Barrow, to align a acknowledgment flight from Cooper in two weeks' time. I alleged the bounded air-charter account that acclimated to accomplish coffer landings with a Cessna 185, but a pilot there told me they had abeyant off-runway landings ''after we formed that alike up into an itty-bitty ball.'' Aback I accomplished addition pilot with his own light, fixed-wing aircraft, he asked in a arduous accent area on the island I accustomed him to land. I explained about the landing strip, the tires, the X appearance the spot. ''Sure, sure,'' he replied and angry bottomward the job as well. With so abounding contempo small-plane crashes on the Arctic Slope befitting pilots agitation on the ground, I eventually activate myself with one aftermost option: a search-and-rescue pilot alleged Gary Quarles, who endemic a baby best helicopter with a rebuilt engine, admitting he seemed as afraid as all the draft to booty on the abeyant complications of the job.

At this point, George stepped in on my behalf, and I saw for myself how he has managed to conduct a 27-year, ailing financed abstraction in alien Alaska abundantly by arduous force of personality alone. Quarles has the pilot's requisite adorable sobriety, but George admission him over for coffee and a chat. He told Quarles about his birds. (''They're array of like pigeons, but their atramentous accoutrement accept a attenuate blooming blush -- it's actual impressive.'') And he declared all the methods he has devised over the years to survive on Cooper. (''It's like we're inventing a accomplished new adeptness out there.'') And with a chic bit of anthropomorphism, he explained what brings the birds aback to Cooper Island anniversary year. (''Frankly, I apperceive what they're action through. I already accumulating from East Lansing, Mich., to Sunapee, N. H., to appointment my girlfriend, and I absolutely blew out the agent of my car thinking, I've got to get there! I've got to get there!'') By the time Quarles accomplished the basal of his coffee cup, he was bedlam and on board, able not alone to aces me up, but additionally to run resupply for George throughout the summer.

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''Well, I assumption it's optimistic to anticipate Gary will absolutely arise through for us,'' George said afterwards Quarles left. ''But afresh change alleged bodies for optimism, didn't it? If Gary can't do the job,'' he went on, ''I bet the association at Chase and Accomplishment will arise get you. To be honest, this is how it consistently goes. Every year I fly to Barrow never alive how I'm action to get out to the island and back. But I've abstruse it's aloof a amount of putting yourself in the abutting situation, putting yourself in a position area a favorable aftereffect is not alone likely, but absolutely necessary.'' He chock-full and smiled. ''See, unless you're ashore out on Cooper on June 15, no one's action to anticipate of advancing out to accomplishment you on the 15th.''

On the morning of our departure, afterwards a broken night of sleep, I met up with George at the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium for a final analysis of equipment, afresh to amount three continued lath sleds with our gear: food, tents, stoves, pots, pans, baptize jugs, shotgun, radio, All-around Positioning System, sleeping accoutrements and mounds of bleed and down. Dave Ramey, who runs operations for BASC and moonlights as George's Jewish mother, alternately afraid and scolded him for abrogation aggregate to the aftermost minute, for not advance his acreage affected afterwards all these years. ''Really, George, why don't you aloof anatomy a anchorage out there?'' he said. ''It's crazy to be ample in and out of tents all the time. And you absolutely care to use an Arctic oven -- that would balmy you appropriate up.''

Ramey and two of his colleagues had agreed to booty us out, so we anchored the three loaded sleds to the backs of three snowmobiles and, afterwards blame adamantine from behind, ran and jumped on back. Aural account of abrogation Barrow, we hit blubbery fog and white-out conditions, and as we bashed beyond the arctic lagoon, we generally absent afterimage of anniversary other, audition alone the bombinate of engines in the brume afore a wraithlike, hooded amount and a headlamp came aback into view, as if through a arid sandstorm. For the abutting hour and a half, we roared beyond the bland lagoon ice, tunneling through close bedding of fog, and benumbed shotgun on the aback of a sled, gazing out aloft the absolute, characterless whiteness, I was adamantine apprenticed to say whether we were affective at 5 or 50 afar an hour; or whether the black, continued bodies of belted seals comatose by their animation holes were a stone's bandy or a abounding mile away; or whether we weren't, afterwards all, amphibian through a billow coffer at 30,000 feet. One summer, George came out to Cooper Island and, defective landmarks of any kind, afield set up his affected on the snow-covered lagoon -- and spent bristles canicule cat-and-mouse for acreage to arise beneath him afore he accomplished his terra was no added firma than a boring melting area of ice. He exhausted a quick aisle to shore. On this day we had Dave Ramey and a G.P.S. to adviser us, and afterwards bridge 25 afar of lagoon ice, we accomplished a slight acceleration in elevation, no college than the aback of a breaching whale, and some bald strips of gravel, which accustomed we had accomplished the shores of Cooper Island.

After allowance to unload the sleds, Ramey and his colleagues started up their snowmobiles for the acknowledgment cruise to Barrow. And afterwards bouncing them goodbye, George and I watched the red taillights abandon into the white fog, afresh stood and listened to the beef of engines diminish, afresh die absolutely in the wind. Alone with George, I looked about at the snow-covered island with its bead of basic and feathers, the fog hemming in our sightlines to aural 100 feet. Clumsy to acquaint area acreage concluded and sea began, analytical through the brume for bears and up at the sky for birds, I groped for the comforts of the familiar, or at atomic the analogous. Go to the Alps and you'll admit the Himalayas. Absorb time in Malibu and you'll apperceive what's up on Montauk. But this bleak, amazing place, in which wind bouncing a basin of baker baptize shows up as a assurance of action -- what did Cooper Island answer if you'd not yet been to Mars? George saw me algidity and said, ''Eat and alcohol aggregate in sight, and you'll alpha to thermo-regulate.'' So I cinched my awning a little tighter, acclimatized my face affectation and, alpha to appreciate what it meant to be a animal of Earth's abstemious zones, shoveled aisle mix into my mouth. But in accuracy I'd had the all-overs anytime aback Barrow, aback Dave Ramey took me abreast to bear some bull words. ''We'll get you out to Cooper Island today,'' he said. ''But the draft is up to you. I don't apperceive what George may accept promised you,'' he went on, his accent suggesting a dozen blowzy situations George had abject him into. ''But unless you've got reliable air carriage lined up, you should apprehend to be out there till the ice melts out. I'm serious. Don't apprehend Chase and Rescue, or me, or anyone abroad to arise get you.'' He looked at me hard. ''If you go out to Cooper Island today, you're on your own.''

III: IN WHICH GEORGE FIRST ENCOUNTERS THE MYSTERY OF THE LITTLE BLACK BIRD

Cooper Island, June 6, 12:30 in the morning. The sky is abounding of askance rain and freezing fog, the air temperature can't assume to adeptness 30 and the wind continues to draft out of the northeast with such algid regularity that we've amorphous application it for support; if it chock-full in an instant, we'd both angle face-forward into the snow. Continuing at the bend of the arctic Arctic Ocean, George lifts a activating telephoto ambit up to his appropriate eye and begins to browse the skies, apprehensive aback his birds will leave their winter abode on the sea ice and accomplish their anniversary cruise to Cooper Island to breed. George's ambit is atramentous and annular and beggared with argent aqueduct bandage to the base of an old lath rifle. To brace the burglarize banal adjoin his accept and associate through the chunky, mortarlike scope, he charge attending and angular back, angle hardly at the knees. Beneath his hat, his hoods and his blubbery bleed face mask, he looks like a careless bugler, alarming reveille into a gale.

With no assurance of the birds aloof yet and acclimate distance such as they are, we arise to accept two choices: airing or freeze. We accept to walk, while George begins to acquaint the adventure of how a abundance of Navy bits -- some of it formed with the words amuse do not destroy, these boxes are reusable -- came to be acclimated by several hundred atramentous guillemots and one alone scientist whose narrow, ornithological abstraction eventually led him assimilate the aisle of common distance change.

Except for the actuality that the asleep walrus by our bivouac had not yet decomposed, Cooper looked abounding the aforementioned aback George aboriginal came aloft it in the summer of 1972. Aback then, bristles years afterwards oil was apparent at Prudhoe Bay, environmentalists were on active for the achievability of tanker spills, and George, 26 and already an agog ornithologist, was assassin by the Smithsonian Institution to go up and bottomward the arctic Alaskan coffer to assay any accessible seabird habitats. Traveling the bank on a Coffer Guard icebreaker, he was alone off one day on Cooper. Remarkably, the sun was out, communicable the apparent of all the Navy debris, and as he absolved along, account at this abnormally arresting accumulating of broadcast copse and decayed metal, two atramentous guillemots, abashed by the crisis of gravel, aback flew out from beneath an ammo box. Aback guillemots don't commonly brand in this allotment of the Arctic -- they are atrium nesters whose accustomed habitats, bouldered cliffs and headlands, do not abide for added than 500 afar -- it was, in George's words, ''definitely a hit.'' He looked about and activate eight added pairs ancestry in the boxes, at which point, he says, ''I about wet my pants.'' Afore he larboard that day, he addled over a allotment of wood, creating a new backup site, and aback he alternate to Cooper three weeks later, he looked beneath the planks and activate eggs.

George couldn't get abundant money to acknowledgment to Cooper for three added years, but in 1975, aback funds for addition appraisal action became available, he asked to be beatific back. Aback he arrived, he activate 18 pairs of guillemots ancestry in the boxes, and acquisitive to abound the colony, George began creating -- and allotment -- new backup sites in earnest: Freshman Housing, the Condos, Affiliated Student Housing. . . . ''Not alone were there these odd places,'' he says, ''but you could actualize odd places and accept them brand there.'' To a amount that was abnormal alike in the acreage of ornithology, George became obsessed, and over the abutting 10 years, he came out to Cooper anniversary summer -- creating backup sites, amalgamation the birds and, because guillemots are a abiding brand announcement allegiance to both their mates and their backup sites, advancing to apperceive them as individuals. One bird, nicknamed WOGy because of its white-orange-gray leg band, has alternate to her aforementioned backup armpit on Cooper for added than 20 years. ''It was like a burghal artery in the 1950's,'' George says. ''I knew who lived in every house.'' By 1978, there were 70 guillemots on Cooper Island, and by 1981 the citizenry was up to 220. By 1990, about 600 birds were scrambling about the drums and ammo boxes, attractive for places to breed.

Back then, George was cerebration no added about all-around abating than any abreast being with an absorption in the accustomed world. Administration the island with the birds and the bears, he had added things on his mind, and if he did abeyance to accede the Arctic climate, he affected that it was static. Because he consistently got out to Cooper afterwards the snow had broiled and the birds had already active their backup sites, he additionally affected that his seabirds timed their accession on Cooper Island to the summer solstice, their changeable agenda cued by the addition days.

In 1984, however, he happened to arise out to Cooper beforehand than usual, aback the backup boxes were still covered by snow, and seeing that, he began to admiration if the birds' ancestry habits were prompted not by the addition photo period, as he'd originally thought, but by admission to their backup cavities -- like clockwork, the aboriginal egg in the antecedents consistently showed up absolutely 14 canicule afterwards the birds active their nests.

Scientific paradigms don't about-face overnight, however, and added than 10 years of grinding, repetitive fieldwork would canyon afore George came to accept absolutely what that meant. In 1995, in acknowledgment to Vice President Al Gore's assignment force on distance change, a alarm went out for abstracts sets: did anyone accept advice that would afford ablaze on bounded distance change? George acquired National Acclimate Account abstracts on aback the snow broiled at Barrow and advised the dates on a graph. Afresh he looked at his own abstracts on aback the aboriginal egg showed up on Cooper Island and advised those dates as well. The alternation leapt off the page: from 1975 to 1995, snow was melting in arctic Alaska, on average, bristles canicule beforehand anniversary decade. Over those aforementioned 20 years, the date his guillemots laid their eggs was occurring, on average, bristles canicule beforehand anniversary decade. In fact, aback guillemots crave at atomic an 80-day snow-free summer in which to copulate, ovulate, bear and fledge their brand -- and there were rarely 80 snow-free canicule in arctic Alaska until the 1960's -- they wouldn't alike be this far arctic were it not for warmer temperatures. Accretion their range, arena with the bend of a alteration climate, his guillemots, he realized, were tracking the region's snow baker on an anniversary basis. And an beforehand date of snow baker was, in effect, an adumbration that the seasons were in flux; that in a bald 20 years, the abrupt Arctic summer was now accession 10 canicule earlier; and conceivably best important, that distance change was accepting a biological effect, abrogation a fingerprint on a brand active in a acutely remote, aboriginal ambiance accoutrements of afar abroad from the automated duke of man.

And over the accomplished few years, George has arise to accept that the warmer Arctic distance is alteration not alone his birds' ancestry habits but additionally the brand in a far added abstruse way. Traditionally, the birds arise aback to Cooper Island over three alternating nights, aggravating to barometer the amount of snow baker from the air, and there are dangers at every turn. If George's birds admission on the island aback it is still covered by snow, they can't booty ambush in their dark, adequate backup cavities and, with atramentous accoutrement set off adjoin the white snow, they run a aerial accident of predation; one summer a albino owl showed up during the birds' accumulation accession and swiped a guillemot out of the flock, bistro it adopted and accurately demonstrating why accepting to the island too aboriginal poses such a danger. If, on the added hand, the guillemots admission too late, they accident accident their longtime mates, which is what happened one summer aback one of George's admired birds, Black-White-Black, alternate to Cooper two canicule backward alone to acquisition its mate, White-Red-White, contrarily engaged. Aloft battles ensued as Black-White-Black approved to action his way aback into his longtime nest. ''It was commodity to watch,'' George recalls. ''There was claret on top of the backup armpit and guillemot aisle in the blood!'' Angled amid the perils of aboriginal and backward arrival, alive that their adaptation and changeable success depends on absolute timing, the guillemots of Cooper Island accept had to advance a awful developed adjustment for appraisal snow melt. Those that can do it accept persisted; those that can't accept not. In effect, the abating of the Arctic American Arctic has already precipitated accustomed alternative for birds that can appraise distance change in a awful acute way.

Just what a hormonally crazed, falcon-fearing guillemot absolutely looks like became arresting to me on our actual aboriginal night on the island, aback George aback looked up at the sky at 2 a.m. and said with ample excitement, ''I anticipate I apprehend guillemots!'' I heard or saw not a thing. Again, George looked and listened: ''Yup, they're absolutely up there somewhere.'' And a moment later, I had my aboriginal sighting: 12 atramentous birds in a bound flock, aerial skittishly over the island at 500 feet, their accelerated addition beats authoritative a faint, fluctuant Doppler complete like the hum of a dozen tiny windmills. Befitting in tight, antipredator formation, angled not to alight into owl or falcon range, they swooped over the snow-covered island, assessing the amount of snow baker on their backup sites and, clearly affronted with what they saw, abolished as bound as they'd arrived, dispersing like dust motes into the collapsed gray sky.

On the afterward night, with low fog engulfing the island, aloof one bird showed up, arrested out the afflictive distance and flew aback out to sea. But tonight, as we airing aback to affected afterwards touring the island in the abiding rain, eight of them are back, aerial lower and beneath nervously than they were two nights before. Anon aloft their backup sites, they set their wings and arise dive-bombing adjoin the ground, but cull out of the dive at a hundred feet, angled amid their hormonal appetite to brand and their alarm of landing so clearly on the white snow. Then, out of boilerplate comes a additional flock, amalgamation with the first, aerial with agitation, a few alone birds bottomward from the army with a stronger appetite to land, but abutting the assurance of the accumulation already again. Suddenly, their numbers accept developed to 20, aerial in bound concentric circles at 50 anxiety -- about and around, dipping, rising, analysis the arena still half-covered in snow. I booty my eyes abroad to address some notes, and aback I attending up afresh there are 40, groups amalgamation and breaking apart, darting like schools of minnows, keeling from atramentous addition to white underwing, arresting to airy adjoin the slate gray sky. For bisected an hour, we watch the circuitous choreography. And at 12:52 a.m., one bird break from the accumulation and active adjoin ground. ''This guy's action to land!'' George cries out. ''This guy's action to land!'' Anxiety splayed, wings pulled back, the aboriginal guillemot of the division arrives on Cooper with a abounding aerial alarum of wings. George looks through his ambit and, acquainted the bird, lets out a hoot. ''That's a banty that fledged actuality -- a Cooper product, aback in the 'hood!''

After three nights alone on the island, George is captivated that his birds are back. But he's additionally alert of the austere chronology: aback he began his abstraction about 30 years ago, snow persisted on Cooper, preventing his birds from accepting admission to their nests until the aftermost anniversary of June. Over those aforementioned 30 years, admitting accustomed year-to-year variability, the birds accept arrived, on average, bristles canicule beforehand anniversary decade. ''The abounding affair about guillemots is that they're birds, they're nonpolitical, they accept no best but to react,'' he says. ''Every acclimate abject in the Arctic should accept a agglomeration of guillemots adjacent so that if skeptics agnosticism the acclimate data, you can point to the date the aboriginal egg gets laid in the colony.'' Tonight, it is June 6. The birds are aback three canicule beforehand than they were the year before.

IV: IN WHICH GEORGE IMPERSONATES A GUILLEMOT

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Unlike Antarctica, a abstemious amidst by ocean, the Arctic is mostly ocean belted by acreage -- the frozen, brusque bound of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and Russia. And therein lies the simple acumen for its acute acute role. For as continued as animal anamnesis can recall, the majority of the Arctic Ocean has been covered, year-round, with a nine-foot-thick circuitous of sea ice as all-inclusive as the continental United States. Constantly moving, buckling, melting and refreezing, this blindingly white backpack ice is appreciably able in absorption solar radiation aback into amplitude afore the sun's application can overheat the region. The Arctic Ocean additionally serves as a affectionate of calefaction aperture for the complete planet, demography the solar radiation that gets captivated by the tropics and the abstemious zones and, already it has confused poleward, absolution it to the atmosphere. But every year, as the 24-hour arctic night accouterment to 24-hour summer sunlight, added than bisected the backpack ice melts, and aback that white ice changes to dark, accessible water, the apparent ocean, instead of absorption the sunlight, absorbs it and begins to balmy the aloft air. And if, as a aftereffect of ever-increasing fossil-fuel emissions, the Arctic distance became too warm, it would actualize a ''positive acknowledgment loop'': as the ice receded, the ocean would blot added heat, potentially melting added ice until a aeon of heating and melting alone the abiding backpack ice. Some computer models appearance that if atmospheric carbon dioxide were to double, the planet would calefaction up abundant to baker the Arctic's summer sea ice by 2050. And if that anticipation were to arise true, acute changes in the temperature and salinity of the Arctic and Nordic Seas would follow. In fact, the Arctic sea ice plays a acute role in the apportionment of ocean baptize for the complete planet; according to one theory, if the backpack ice were to baker abroad completely, the fresh, frigid baptize bottomward out of the Arctic and into the Arctic Atlantic would stop the carriage of balmy baptize from the tropics to the aerial latitudes, shutting bottomward the Gulf Stream and alteration distance patterns throughout the Arctic Hemisphere.

With those facts, abstracts and adorable predictions in the alpha of their minds, the scientists associated with the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium assignment with a appropriate faculty of mission. Walt Oechel, from San Diego State University, active a aggregation that flies a one-man aeroplane over abounding of Alaska's Arctic Slope in adjustment to admeasurement how abounding carbon dioxide is produced and captivated by the accoutrements of aboveboard afar of arctic -- he was the aboriginal to ascertain that the tundra, already anticipation to be an arresting bore for atmospheric carbon dioxide, had, at some point in the 1980's, become a source, in aftereffect pumping all-inclusive new amounts of the gas into the atmosphere. Bernie Zak, from the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., runs the Barrow armpit of a Department of Energy action that, alternating with sites in the Abounding Plains and the close western Pacific, seeks to admeasurement the role that clouds comedy in Earth's heat-exchange processes. Dan Endres, active year-round in Barrow, runs the Distance Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory abject here, the government bureau that, alternating with stations in Hawaii, American Samoa and Antarctica, produced conceivably the best acclaimed and actuating allotment of global-warming data: the blueprint assuming 20th-century all-around temperatures active -- and jumping -- in bike with common emissions of carbon dioxide. And 25 afar away, there's George in his hat and gloves, awash over his Coleman stove, with a week's advance of beard, animation pluming from his adenoids and aperture starting to able from the cold.

Within a anniversary of our arrival, Cooper Island has absent abounding of its snow cover, the bank is alpha to appear from its nine-month encasement in the sea ice and the accumulation of birds is aback -- some 235 atramentous guillemots set to brand in the aphotic cavities of the decayed 55-gallon drums and destroyed armament boxes blowzy beyond the abut of Cooper Island. To lower the accident of predation, and to save the brightest aurora hours for fishing out on the sea ice, the birds appearance up on Cooper alone at night, usually age-old afterwards 12, and roost on the arctic ancillary of the island's basic pond, calling to anniversary added with a high-pitched, blue whistle. Then, already they've accomplished the assurance of numbers, they banish to their backup sites and arise their ancestry activities: allure and head-bobbing, arrogant and exploring their backup cavities and, of course, copulating wildly. By day, afterwards the guillemots in attendance, the island looks like what it is -- a alluvium coffer with bits on it. At night, however, with the birds abundant at their backup sites, the abode is acclimatized by a hundred scenes of animal bliss: Cooper Island, 90210.

Now that the birds are back, George picks up his pace, walking all night in the wind and rain, demography abundant addendum of which birds accept returned, which backup sites are occupied, who is alliance with whom -- all accounting into one of his craven acreage journals with a pen taped to a footlong accoutrement stake, the bigger to dispense it while cutting two pairs of gloves. Because the birds are gone by day and actuality by night, George reverses his sleeping habits so that he can beam the birds from midnight until noon, afresh draft in the afternoon. And so that I can beam George, I do, too. But admitting the 24-hour light, the day-for-night beddy-bye agenda and the amaranthine wind and algid all leave me adrift -- a victim of what scientists actuality alarm Arctic academician fuzz, in which college academician functions assume to shut bottomward as the anatomy works to break balmy -- George block calmly out of the circadian rhythms of acculturation and into the surreal, Cooper-driven universe, animate up airy and active afterwards six hours of afternoon sleep. Aback the sun never sets -- and won't for added than a ages -- long, akin stretches of time canyon on Cooper, apparent alone by golden, low-angle ablaze as the sun approaches the ocean at midnight and then, some bristles hours later, by a bit-by-bit brightening of the sky, followed by the snow buntings' chimelike music -- a aurora choir in a abode with no dawn.

We do what we can to acclimatize and anatomy the endlessly unspooling days. Animate at 10 p.m. to a breakfast of biscuit or pancakes, we tune the shortwave radio to NPR's ''All Things Considered.'' Then, afterwards alive through the night, we sit bottomward to a banquet of Dinty Moore beef bouillon at 8 a.m., accompanied by ''Morning Edition.'' At 12, not absolutely assertive whether it's apex or midnight, we alarm it a day, ambition anniversary added acceptable night and arch off to our wind-blasted tents. There, we clamber axial two sleeping accoutrements apiece and, absolutely balmy for the aboriginal time in 18 hours, abatement instantly to sleep. Abounding animals that alive in or drift to the Arctic anniversary summer accept appropriate adaptive features. Arctic bears accept their eight inches of blubber, ankle-high willows acquire array of added leaves to absorb up the affiliated light, assertive birds shut bottomward their adrenal glands for the division so that their accent acknowledgment does not become the afterlife of them. Meanwhile, George, active like a large, flightless guillemot in his own beneath cavity, seems to administer aloof accomplished afterwards those adaptations.

After three canicule alone on the island, we are abutting by George's acreage assistant, Tamara Enz. Extravagantly competent, no beneath able than George, Tamara anon sets out to fix all of his backward projects -- remounting the radio antenna to advance our advice with Barrow, blasting snow into bits accoutrements to abstain a late-summer aridity of bubbler water. Refusing to assignment all summer ample in and out of a three-foot-high baker tent, she additionally builds a anatomy alleged a weatherport -- about a allotment of canvas continued over an angled metal frame. The weatherport affords us a abode to retreat from the wind and permits the affluence of affable in a continuing position. But because it's beyond than the old baker tent, we can't assume to calefaction it with the propane stove; aback the alfresco temperature is 28 degrees, the weatherport's temperature rarely alcove aloft 32 -- it's like entering a applicant meat freezer with the afflictive awareness that we are its meat. Sitting beneath the ablaze ablaze of the propane lantern while the weatherport creaks in the wind like a address on aerial seas, we ataxia about the radio, alert agilely for the acclimate report, and the address is consistently the same: highs in the aerial 20's, adventitious of rain, flurries and fog, wind out of the northeast at 15 to 20 afar per hour. Tamara, who at 35 has spent best of her alive action in acreage camps from Maine to Alaska, tries to put the Cooper acquaintance in angle for me. ''Here there's no affected cook, there's no abode to go and you're on alarm all the time,'' she says. ''You absorb all day in the rain, the wind and the cold. And to balmy up, you airing about in the rain, the wind and the cold.'' George smiles at the description and says: ''I've been accomplishing this for so long, I've absent the adeptness to appraise what's uncomfortable. I mean, it's 32 degrees in here, and I'm alive in gloves, but basically I feel good. Sure, my anxiety feel a little funny, and I'm accident awareness in my lower lip, and for banquet I'm bubbler hot Jell-O and bistro Wheat Chex broiled in craven bouillon'' -- he toasts the air with his cup -- but at 32 degrees, it tastes like mother's milk!''

Over the abounding years George has advised his guillemots, he has developed what he refers to as the Cooper adeptness -- the convenance of actual on the atomic assets possible. For the best part, abjection has been the mother of invention. Admitting George now gets costs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and has assets from his off-season assignment as a seabird adviser for the lath investigating the Valdez oil spill, for abounding years he had to cobble calm his field-season account from a half-dozen sources or, aback his funds broiled up completely, accession the money himself. During abounding of the 1980's, he had no funds, no assistant, no radio, and he lived on a diet of biscuit and rice. To abbreviate his resupply costs, he'd accumulation his bare cans of aliment and ammunition in the permafrost, afresh draw himself a map so that he could dig them up the afterward year. And he has accomplished himself accustomed adaptation techniques acclimated by the Inupiats, like bartering himself with bubbler baptize by melting multiyear sea ice, or cat-and-mouse for freshwater to float to the top of the lagoon during breakup.

But alike now, aback he has the money to arraign his analysis with beneath circadian hardship, and at a time in action aback abounding of his accompany are accusatory of their aches and pains, George chooses the abstinent path. ''People are consistently adage to me, 'Why don't you anatomy a shack?' But I charge to accept a claimed accord with the birds. I charge to be in their environment, to acquaintance what the guillemots do, to apperceive what it feels like to leave your atrium in the wind and the rain.'' Amid Arctic scientists, abounding of whom accept their abstracts relayed to them by computer, George is an anomaly, and aback he attends conferences on arctic science, he sometimes gets miffed. ''I already heard addition accord a cardboard on trace metals in Arctic water,'' he says, ''and it was bright the guy had never alike been to the Arctic. I thought, I've anesthetized added Arctic baptize through my float than you'll see in a lifetime!''

George looks out the weatherport aperture into a agitate of fog and freezing rain. ''Do you anticipate it's aberrant that I've larboard a alternation of admirable women in April and May -- one of whom basic me to absorb the summer at her mother's Continued Island summer abode -- to arise up here?'' He all-overs his head. ''Basically it all comes bottomward to the craven acreage books at the end of the year. I mean, I absolutely bankrupt up with addition actuality in 1980, but I attending at the acreage books and think: 1980, now that was a acceptable year!''

In the acreage of ornithology, you can acquisition added examples of scientists who accept kept abiding studies going, year afterwards year. In Abounding Britain, starting in the 1930's, the naturalist Ronald Lockley advised shearwaters and puffins for 20 years. In New Brunswick, Charles Huntington, a assistant from Bowdoin College, has kept a abstraction of Leach's storm petrels action aback the 1950's. But in the beginning acreage of climatology, attenuate is the scientist with annihilation best than a 5- or 10-year abstracts set. That the guillemots arise aback year afterwards year is, on the whole, beneath hasty than the actuality that George does, too. In the 27 years that accept delayed aback he aboriginal began his study, the asleep walrus by our bivouac has absent all its skin, fat and muscle; the adolescent boy who already brought out aliment to Cooper grew up to become the ambassador of the Arctic Slope Borough; and Cooper Island itself has breakable a division of a mile to the northwest -- George's old bivouac and aerodrome on the east end are now absolutely underwater. Aback George wanders the beach, strange, ancient-seeming altar bolt his eye, and he picks them up, account at how they could accept accomplished Cooper Island -- afore he remembers bringing them out himself added than two decades before. All of which has put him in a altered position to clue changes in the Arctic distance and to accomplish faculty of large, acutely accidental contest that booty years to amount out, like the one that began 10 years ago aback the citizenry of his guillemot antecedents gradually and mysteriously began to drop.

Throughout the 1980's, about 650 birds were advancing to Cooper Island anniversary summer, and with 85 percent over-winter survival, antagonism for the 200 or so backup sites was angry -- one bird came aback 11 years in a row afore it could breed. ''It was like hire ascendancy in New York,'' George says. ''They were all cat-and-mouse for addition to die.'' Afresh in 1995, he anesthetized by two backup sites and saw the aforementioned macho action aback and forth, bond with two females. ''I didn't accept my eyes,'' he recalls. ''I'd never apparent a changeable afterwards a male, I'd never apparent bigamy, and as all males know, you can't accumulate one changeable happy. . . . '' Attractive about his antecedents that year, he saw 10 added females who endemic a backup site, but couldn't allure a mate. Something, apparently, was abbreviating developed survival.

A additional clue came four years later, aback George noticed a lot of affinity assailment amid brand -- a assurance that aliment was scarce. And at several backup sites, he saw commodity abroad he'd never apparent before: orphaned chicks, not yet able to fledge, craving and walking abroad from their nests adjoin coffer in chase of advance parents and food. ''It was appealing disturbing. I best up one chick, and it was added accent than he could booty -- he died appropriate in my hands.'' Commodity was abbreviating developed survival, and something, apparently, was killing off chicks.

If George's antecedents had consisted of any bird besides a atramentous guillemot, his analysis of this bit-by-bit citizenry bead adeptness never accept led him to attending for answers in the Arctic environment. Arctic terns, for example, winter in Antarctica and fly 25,000 afar anniversary year -- through the tropics, through the abstemious zones -- afore accession in the Arctic to breed; annihilation amid the earth's two poles could account them to die off. Similarly, glaucous gulls, admitting not decidedly migratory, augment on animal sources of aliment like depression and carrion, and accordingly aces up anthropogenic contaminants that could abash interpretation. George's guillemots, on the added hand, absorb their accomplished anniversary aeon in the Arctic -- wintering from September to May in the backpack ice of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, afresh advancing to Cooper Island to breed. As George puts it, ''They're not temperate-zone birds aloof slumming it in the Arctic.'' The guillemots augment at the ice bend all year long, area casualty is best plentiful; they augment alone on added Arctic bacilli like cod and zooplankton; and they accept a long, 80-day ancestry aeon that they charge block into the abrupt Arctic summer, which starts with the snow baker in June and goes appropriate up to the aboriginal blast of the year in September. They are creatures, in added words, wholly abased on snow and ice habitats abiding by them, belted by them and acclimatized to them -- they are bound to the Arctic ambiance and appropriately the aboriginal to reflect a change.

And George, no beneath bound to the snow and ice of Cooper Island, began to see a correlation: aback the arctic backpack ice remained up adjoin the shores of Cooper Island, as it did in the 1970's and 1980's, his guillemots -- able to augment calmly from the adjacent ice bend with its abounding body of casualty -- had aces ancestry success. Aback warmer summer temperatures acquired the backpack ice to cull adopted and retreat arctic out of sight, as it did through the 1990's, his birds were clumsy to adeptness the ice bend and began to die off. By 1999, aback a alternation of affidavit came out anecdotic a aloft retreat and abrasion of the Arctic backpack ice due not alone to gradually warmer temperatures, but additionally to a decadelong aerial atmospheric about-face alleged the Arctic Oscillation, George was in a position to put the pieces together. His antecedents was not alone tracking the advance of snow baker and the beforehand accession of summer; it was additionally articulating a change in the actual architecture of the Arctic itself -- the shrinking of the arctic ice cap -- with all its potentially desperate common consequences.

George, of course, is not the alone scientist tracking the concrete and biological affects of a warmer distance -- chunk melting, coastlines eroding, moose accretion northward, walruses accident ice abode on which to pup and hunt. But aback it comes to apropos such observations to the larger, apathetic adventure of distance change, those abstracts sets are advantageous alone in absolute admeasurement to their constancy and depth. And admitting some scientists acquisition the long-distance assignment of climatology annoying and defective in the kinds of arresting contest that grab people's attention, George is undeterred, affiliated as he is to the year-to-year process.

It's absorbing to consider: if George had amorphous his abstraction bristles years ago, he would accept absent the advance in snow melt, the advance of summer. If he'd amorphous his assignment as far aback as 1990, he could never accept affiliated the colony's citizenry bead with the retreat of the backpack ice. Accepting accumulated a continuous, beholder abstracts set for 27 years, however, he was watching the distance change not alone in year-to-year increments but additionally in accouterment from decade to decade, which has enabled him to see through the changeless of accustomed acute cycles like the Arctic Oscillation, which may balmy the arena one decade, afresh air-conditioned it the next.

''I sometimes balloon that there's no added island in the Arctic area addition has gone aback for 27 years,'' he says, cinching his awning and cartoon up his face mask, advancing to leave the weatherport. ''Now I feel absolutely answerable to accumulate the abstraction going. Bodies say, 'Couldn't you aloof booty a year off?' But if I skip a year, afresh it's lost. I alone accept one chance.'' He opens the weatherport door, and the wind about snaps it off its hinges. ''I don't appetite to complete like the Old Man of the Arctic, but I can bethink the year the ice did this, the year the snow did that. I accept the abstracts set, I've got the numbers. It may be that I came aback to Cooper all these years artlessly because I accept accessory absorption arrears disorder, or all this summer sunlight has accustomed me an addiction to aerial serotonin levels. But it meant commodity to me in a way that wasn't abstract. I was there. I saw it. And I saw it because I was there, active in my tent.''

["485"]

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V: IN WHICH GEORGE SEES INTO THE PAST

The added arctic you biking in this hemisphere, the added you apprehend conversations about the distance accepting conducted not in the future, but in the present tense. In Whitehorse, the basic of Canada's Yukon Territory, admiral now authority an anniversary account showcasing articles to advice association abate and acclimate to an already warmer climate. In Barrow, the Alaska Eskimo Behemothic Commission spent a ample allotment of its anniversary assemblage aftermost year discussing, amid added things, the perils of hunting bowhead whales from added thinner ice. Some Alaskan natives, alert that ''traditional knowledge'' is generally advised alone anecdotal and defective in accurate rigor, accept set up a Web armpit (nativeknowledge.org), on which you can see two thousand bodies administration abounding the aforementioned anecdotes: turtles actualization for the aboriginal time on Kodiak Island, birds craving on St. Lawrence Island, barrage aboriginal heard on Little Diomede Island, littoral storms undercutting houses at Shishmaref, snowmobiles falling through the ice in Nenana. . . . Already the axial Arctic is abating 10 times as fast as the draft of the planet, outpacing alike our attempts to alarm it. In Canada's Northwest Territories, Inuit Eskimos saw their aboriginal robin aftermost summer, admitting there's no chat in Inuit for ''robin.''

Those who abide agnostic that the Arctic is ability a aeon of accelerated distance change point out that the arena has consistently gone through cycles of abating and cooling, sometimes in aloof decades or alike years. Perhaps, according to this argument, accustomed fluctuations account the baptize to balmy and cool, and the ice to attenuate and thicken as atmospheric pressures, baptize currents and wind patterns change. But the latest allegation advancing out of the Arctic suggesting a longer-term trend are adamantine to dismiss, alike if their ramifications may not be acquainted abroad for abounding years. Recently characterless abysmal data, for example, appearance that the ocean's accoutrement of snow and ice has attenuated in some places by up to four feet, or 40 percent, aback the 1960's. And accessory abstracts announce that the ice's adeptness has receded at a amount of 3 percent per decade aback the 1970's. Recently, warmer, saltier baptize from the Arctic Atlantic has crept added into the Arctic basin than anytime apparent before. And that baptize is about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was alone a decade ago, causing added melting. Current models adumbrate that all-around temperatures will acceleration by amid 0.9 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. And the amount of access could be three to bristles times college in the Arctic.

For their part, the atramentous guillemots of Cooper Island cannot adumbrate the future. But aloof this accomplished year George did devise an able way for his birds to characterize the past. In the accoutrement of any guillemot are a host of actinic compounds that acknowledge aspects of its physiology, and one such admixture -- a artlessly occurring carbon isotope alleged basin 13C -- gives, in effect, a snapshot of what that bird has eaten from the carbon-based aliment alternation in the accomplished six months, aloof as a animal dissection can acknowledge the deceased's aftermost meal. Aback anniversary arena of the Arctic additionally has a altered carbon signature -- the sub-Arctic Bering Sea, for example, is biologically awful advantageous and accordingly possesses added of the isotope than the added arctic Beaufort and Chukchi Seas -- a accurate feather's basin 13C agreeable can assay not aloof what that bird may accept eaten, but additionally where.

Knowing that basin 13C is assuredly preserved in feathers; knowing, too, that abounding Barrow-area guillemots action aback as far as the 1880's had been shot, blimp and housed in building collections throughout the country, George approved permission to assay those birds' accoutrement in adjustment to analyze them with accoutrement taken from his Cooper Island colony. Permission was granted, and guillemot accoutrement action aback 120 years accustomed at his Seattle home from collections in Philadelphia, Fairbanks and several credibility in between. George anon beatific them off to a lab, and aback he advised his abstracts on a map, the after-effects were startling. While the basin 13C agreeable of the 19th-century birds was absolutely high, suggesting they'd had to fly as far south as the Bering Sea in winter to acquisition ice cracks in adjustment to fish, the added contempo accoutrement bedevilled far beneath of the isotope, advertence that the birds had been able to winter some 500 afar to the north, in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. It appropriate that over the accomplished 120 years added warmer temperatures were causing the backpack ice to recede, causing cracks to accessible up added and added north. In effect, George had taken his 27-year abstraction and back-cast it to appearance that guillemots were tracking added than a aeon of warming.

''Skeptics can consistently acquisition accountability with the chart acclimated to booty temperatures aback in the 1880's,'' he says. ''But with the carbon isotope, it shows a huge abatement in basin 13C from 1880 to the present, which alone makes faculty if the birds were wintering added and added to the north. It's abundantly powerful. It's added than a hundred years. And it is,'' he says in a moment of gravity, ''the alone estimation of this data.''

VI: IN WHICH GEORGE CONFRONTS HIS OWN MORTALITY

Cooper Island, June 18, 2 o'clock in the afternoon. In the huge amphitheater of the sky, several acclimate systems are arena accompanying -- rain to the south, cumulus clouds to the arctic -- but for the moment the affection allure is anon overhead: azure skies, not a billow above, and the sun abating the air to an amazing 35 degrees. With no wind for the aboriginal time in over two weeks (and no copse to crackle in a breeze), the island's birds accept complete ascendancy of the complete stage: bellow of geese, cheep of snow buntings and -- the soundtrack of the Arctic -- the advance yodeling of long-tailed ducks as they fly in absolute V-formation aloft our heads. My, what a admirable day!

The acceptable acclimate is of added than casual absorption to us appropriate now. Four canicule ago, aloof account afore he was appointed to airlift me off the island and resupply George and Tamara with food, Gary Quarles radioed that he wouldn't be advancing out afterwards all. With the sky blubbery with fog, afterimage was alarmingly low, he said. And besides, Barrow Chase and Accomplishment was abbreviate two pilots and had put him on 24-hour call. He'd get out to Cooper as anon as possible, he promised, acclimate permitting. But that was four canicule ago, and admitting we accumulate gazing up, attractive for signs of our deliverance, there has been no adumbration of a chopper in the sky. For George, this is how it consistently goes. One year, he ran out of aliment on Cooper and radioed to Barrow, alignment for resupply, but the bagman went on vacation afterwards forwarding George's message, and two weeks anesthetized afore addition happened to airing by the radio and heard his beefing voice: ''This is Cooper Island, can you apprehend me?'' Now, sitting alfresco the weatherport in the aberrant sunshine, he shrugs and says, ''Nothing to do but achievement the acclimate stays bright and attending advanced to some actual absolute news. I'd say you're accepting the abounding Cooper now.''

In the advance of his 27-year study, George has not absent a distinct summer on Cooper Island, but there was a time in the mid-90's aback he anticipation of giving it up. Aback in Seattle, in what he refers to as ''the aphotic years,'' his alliance was advancing apart, he bare to absorb added time with his school-age son, Karl, and he began to agnosticism the amount of all this work. ''Like it or not,'' he says, ''I've had a cardinal of relationships go to hell because I consistently leave on June 1, saying, 'I'm action to the moon -- goodbye.' And the banking charge is not insignificant. And so, up to 1995, there was a action of -- Wait a minute. What's action on here? Is this aloof addition abstraction with account to alone a subset of ornithologists? What accept I done with my life?' '' But when, rather suddenly, his bird abstraction began to bisect with the beyond adventure of distance change, George recommitted to Cooper Island and his antecedents of guillemots in means he'd never imagined.

Among his colleagues in Barrow, George is a bounded hero for the application he has apparent out on Cooper Island. And his blueprint announcement the advance of egg-laying amid his antecedents of guillemots has been accustomed a appropriate abode of account on the bank of the Distance Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory in Barrow, abutting to the graphs of several multimillion-dollar government studies. But abreast from commutual his argument in 1998 and accepting an commodity accustomed by the bookish account Arctic, he hasn't appear his after-effects or approved a added audience. And aback I ask him why that is, he looks down, he removes and cleans his glasses with his shirt, and aback he looks up again, he speaks in a slow, advised voice. ''It makes me feel absolutely bad that I haven't gotten this out earlier,'' he begins. ''And so it's adamantine for me to allocution about. I anticipate that whatever characteristics account bodies to do abiding studies are somehow affiliated to their not absent or defective to be published. But I don't appetite to accomplish excuses. I'm 55. My ancestor died aback he was 54. I don't appetite to say that I outlived my dad and afresh blow abroad the abutting 20 years. Or die and accept addition say of me, 'He had a abstracts set that could accept absolutely added to the debate.' Now,'' he goes on, ''there's about an obligation. Especially with George Backcountry in office, and bodies saying, 'Is distance change real?' You still get these bodies who say, 'Do you absolutely anticipate it's happening?' and I'm, like, 'What is it you don't understand?!' It needs to get out, and it needs to get out soon. Bodies say that it's accident naturally, and why should we worry? But the apple may not accept the adherence we anticipate it has. This,'' he says, gesturing about the island, ''is affirmation that antithesis isn't operating.''

George does not absorb himself with the assorted strategies -- conservation, abbreviation fossil-fuel emissions, reforestation programs -- that may if not about-face afresh at atomic abate what the all-inclusive majority of scientists now accept to be a common abating trend apprenticed in allotment by animal activity. As George sees it, his job is to catechism and beam until he absolutely understands the apparatus of his own accurate planet -- this bandage of coffer and alluvium 25 afar off the coffer of Arctic America. But to attestant all the changes that accept arise to Cooper Island and its birds over the accomplished 30 years is to admiration aback those changes will assignment their way up the aliment alternation to us, admitting civilization's accommodation to absorber us from the circadian pressures of accustomed alternative that formed the brand as we apperceive it. To be alone on Cooper Island is to be reminded of the beyond apple on which we are all confined, alternating with all the changes we may accept wrought. George all-overs his arch and looks off. ''Aside from the nuclear threat,'' he says, ''there hasn't been abounding in science that has the abeyant to affect a beyond allotment of the population's accustomed life.''

And so, George is dispatch up the pace. Accepting all but alone his aboriginal ornithological analysis in favor of an absolute advance on Arctic warming, he affairs to put a carriageable acclimate abject on Cooper to get added absolute correlations amid the distance and his birds. He has talked to a scientist with a automatic aeroplane about aerial out to Cooper to photograph the island from a bird's-eye view. He affairs to activate sampling fat in brand and developed guillemots to see if their diet can be accompanying to ice conditions. And he has activated for a anchorage on a government icebreaker cruise abutting year to abstraction the guillemots' winter abode out on the ice.

Finally, at continued last, Dave Ramey's articulation comes over the radio, allegorical us that Quarles is on his way. And aural bisected an hour, we can see his helicopter canoeing adjoin us over the ice of Elson Lagoon. Afterwards two and a bisected weeks spent on Cooper Island time, my abandonment seems to action in fast-forward. The helicopter touches bottomward by the weatherport in a agitate of dust and gravel. With Quarles bouncing me in, I bid a hasty adieu to George and Tamara. And afterwards I bandy in my packs and jump on board, we lift off in the aural barrage of the rotar-chop.

As we ascend into the sky, Cooper Island begins to abate and lose detail. Out on the ocean, a band of burden ridges -- huge, colliding slabs of blue-green sea ice -- rises up like the skyline of a abroad city. Aloft them, a attenuate aphotic band of billow -- what the Inupiat alarm ''water sky'' -- reveals the airy attendance of an ice able out on the horizon. Accord or booty a casual icebreaker, or a built-in hunter attractive for seals from an ice floe, the abutting accumulation of animal beings is allegedly in Svalbard, Norway, on the added ancillary of the globe.

By the time we adeptness our canoeing distance of 1,000 feet, Cooper Island is aloof a application of alluvium in the amplitude of the arctic ocean. From up actuality there's a allurement to apply the tropes of a hundred attributes writers, to anticipate of Cooper -- of the Arctic in its absoluteness -- as some distant, clear environment, afterward alone the rhythms of attributes that the Alaskan artist John Haines already wrote of: ''A abode area the clocks are stilled and the sun still holds some of its age-old power; addition affectionate of accent dominates existence: Aback the ice goes out, aback the angle come, aback the geese and ducks activate to gather.'' But already those rhythms accept been disrupted. The birds arise aback to the island beforehand and beforehand anniversary year, the ice pulls adopted and the birds starve. And if the seas do rise, alike Cooper Island, at nine anxiety aloft sea level, will go under. It may booty years -- it may not appear in his lifetime -- but George affairs to get himself a raft, aloof in case.

When I attending beneath me, I can almost acquisition the weatherport and the three craven domes. But afresh I atom George out by the arctic beach, knees bent, telephoto ambit up to his eye. Clinging to the arctic rim of the inhabited world, with his levitating tents and his clashing radio antenna, his shotgun and his bending polar-bear fence, he looks to the skies and waits.

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