Stripped to his shirt sleeves on a desolate Arctic beach, the hunter gazes over his disappearing world.

The sun glitters on waves surrounding his island village. The town sits amid the ruins of dugouts his ancestors chipped from the permafrost when Pharaohs were building pyramids in the hot sands of Egypt.

Thousands of years ago, nomads chased caribou here across a now-lost land connection from Siberia, 100 miles away. Scientists believe those nomads became the first Americans. Now their descendants are about to become global warming refugees. The village is being swallowed by the sea.

"We have no room left here," says 43-year-old Tony Weyiouanna. "I have to think about my grandchildren. We need to move."

Weather dictates survival in the Arctic and native Alaskans are alarmed by a noticeable warming trend. Average temperatures have risen more than 4F (2.2C) since 1971.

This is still a very rustic village. Its forlorn breakwater of sandbags and rusting vehicles is often breached by storms. Recently, four homes tumbled into the sea while villagers huddled in the Lutheran church.

Fuel and water tanks teeter just a few strides from the brink. Another gale or two and the entire island - a half-mile at its widest, 10ft (3m) at its highest - could be inundated.

Mr Weyiouanna's ancestors simply would have loaded their dogsleds and mushed inland. But, in modern times, moving a town means Shishmaref's 600 residents must vote.

The US Army Corps of Engineers says the cost of moving will be at least $100m (£70m). Residents hope the government will pay, although state and federal officials say no relocation fund exists.

And it is an upheaval many Americans might face in coming decades. In June, the Bush administration submitted a report to the UN acknowledging for the first time that climate change is real and unavoidable. In Alaska, signs of warming are everywhere. Sea ice volume has declined 15 per cent and thinned from 10ft to 6ft in places. When ice disappears, so do the staple foods - whale, walrus, seal and waterfowl, even polar bear. Glaciers are retreating by 15 per cent and losing half their thickness every decade. Alaskan meltwater accounts for half of the worldwide sea level rise of 7.8in (19.8cm) in the past 100 years.

In nearby Barrow, one morning, rumors of seal and walrus sightings ricochet through town. Men hustle from offices to haul boats to the water's edge. Schoolchildren cycle along the beach, cradling rifles. Offshore, the concussion of what locals call "combat hunting" thumps for hours as the ghostly shadows of outboard launches swerve between glistening icebergs. Then the real work has to begin.

In his gravel yard, Eugene Brower unfolds a table padded with layers of grease-soaked cardboard and duct tape. He is surrounded by four walrus shot that morning, their whiskered heads still sporting ivory tusks. He carves out slabs of purple meat.

Then he saws the glistening tan blubber. Each fist-sized chunk - fat, skin and brown furry hide - is tossed into plastic pails for rendering.

"In this heat it should go fast," Mr Brower explains, his knife never pausing. "We eat it all. It's good for you. I've got 11 grandkids. I need to put meat on their tables."

Mr Brower, 56, mops his round face and bristly moustache with his T-shirt. "When it hit 70 this week, my neighbor bought a fan," he chortles.

His three-year-old adopted son, Andrew, frolics next to a boat Mr Brower made with sealskins. The skin boat, called an umiaq, should be seaworthy for a decade. In this heat, it may not last until Andrew's first hunt in five years' time.

The wisdom the old man shares with Andrew will be different from what he taught his older sons. "The ice is thinner. The air is warmer," Mr Brower said. "When you are out on the ice, you can see the steam rising. And that's something you don't want to see."

Back in Shishmaref, three village women open the Bingo Hall and stretch the Stars and Stripes across the wall. They tack a sample ballot to the door.

It reads: "Do you want to relocate the Community of Shishmaref?" To vote, "Mark an X to the right of Yes or No."

No hanging chads here.

An hour ticks by. Winfred Obruk wanders in. He drops his ballot into the locked box, tapping the lid twice for emphasis. At 63, he says he is ready to abandon the only home he's known. "There's nothing else we can do," he said. "The storms make you feel kind of small. It feels odd to move, but that's nature."

For a valid referendum, Shishmaref needs 40 per cent of its 341 registered voters to cast ballots. The village's median age is about 20. Most youths stay up late hunting, playing video games or cruising the beach on ATVs. By mid-afternoon, some were rousted to vote. They want to go anywhere, it seems.

"I went to school on the mainland," said Leona Goodhope, 19, "and when I came back, my house was gone. They moved it to the other side of the village, or it would've fallen in."

A new village probably would have indoor plumbing, refuse collection and upgraded telecommunications for better e-mail and television but not everyone is eager. Clifford Weyiouanna, 60, pointed to recent improvements - a school extensions, a tannery, an automated laundry. And what about the cemetery?

"My mother and grandmother are in there," he said. "This is where they were born and lived. I think maybe they should stay here."

At 8pm, the election judges hand-count the ballots. Outside, a slightly impatient crowd is gathered for bingo.

The vote: 161-20. Shishmaref will move. Nobody cheered, nobody smiled.

The island still could be used as a summer fishing camp, said Tony Weyiouanna. He will co-ordinate relocation.

"We will be putting money into the move," he said, "and not pouring it into the sea."

The vote means the release of $1m in federal funds to examine the relocation's impact on potential mainland sites.

And where is the favored spot for the expensive and heart-rending move?

Five miles east.

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Scientists Warn-1999 Fifth Warmest Year

THE 1990s have been the hottest decade of the millennium, British scientists will confirm today, adding to fears that the globe is in the grip of man-made global warming.

Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, said yesterday: "Although we do not have instrumental records going back further than the mid-19th century for global temperatures, analysis of tree rings, ice cores, corals and historical records indicates that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium." Figures from the Meteorological Office's Hadley Centre and the university show that seven of the world's ten warmest years since records began were in the 1990s and that they include this year.

Dr Jones said that Central England was expected to have been the warmest this year since observations and records began in 1659. It is set to beat 1990, the area's previous warmest year, although that record might be threatened if there is a very cold snap. It was nevertheless certain that 1999 in Britain and across the globe would be one of the warmest years ever, which was "further evidence that global warming is probably happening".

The figures, being released by the World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva, show that 1999 was the fifth warmest year on record based on global observations going back to 1860. Temperatures were 0.33C higher than in 1961-90 and 0.7C higher than those at the turn of the century.

David Parker, of the Met Office, said yesterday that the fact that last year was cooler than 1998 was attributable to La Niña, the aftermath of El Niño, which had a warming effect on the globe.

"The rapid cooling of temperatures in the equatorial Pacific has contributed to 1999 being significantly cooler than in 1998, the hottest year on record. This large, natural variability is exactly what we expect to see superimposed on a long-term warming due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

"Our forecast for 2000 shows a high probability of it being warmer than 1999 as the cold Pacific slowly warms," Mr Parker said. The World Meteorological Organisation said that the century was the warmest of the millennium. It said that the high temperature of 1999 was "remarkable because it occurred despite the typical cooling influence of the tropical La Niña".

See also-ABC News: http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/reuters19991215_4281.html

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Borneo Rain Forest On Verge Of Total Destruction

A rare tropical rain forest, where reproduction of the trees is intricately linked to the arrival of the El Niño weather phenomenon, faces imminent death due to increased logging and human-intensified climate change.

The loss of the forest, located on the island of Borneo and regarded as a unique ecosystem, would put a huge dent in the global economy. Timber exports contribute $8 billion annually to the Indonesian economy and provide 80 percent of the plywood used in the United States home building industry.

"Degradation of dipterocarp forests will have repercussions both in Bornean terrestrial ecosystems and in regional economies with global implications in as yet unforeseen ways," researchers, led by ecologist Lisa Curran at the University of Michigan, write in the Dec. 10 issue of Science. Dipterocarps are the main family of rain forest canopy trees in Indonesian Borneo. The trees synchronize their reproduction, called masting, to the onset of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, which occurs about once every four years. "Climatic conditions of an El Niño year trigger simultaneous fruiting in dipterocarps and are essential for regional seed production," she said. "It's like Thanksgiving in the forest."

Wild boar, orangutans, parakeets, jungle fowl, partridges and other animals congregate to stuff themselves. Local villagers collect baskets of seeds called illipe nuts to sell as a cash crop. Yet, since so much seed is produced, there is still enough leftover to germinate and produce a carpet of new seedlings.

The problem, the researchers discovered, is that intensive logging on the island around the Gunung Palung National Park over the past decade has reduced seed production from 175 pounds per acre in 1991 to 16.5 pounds per acre in 1998, even though 1998 was a major El Niño year. According to the research, logging appears to reduce the local density and biomass of mature trees, reduces the spatial extent of masting and alters the forest's response to El Niño by disrupting soil conditions or causing extended drought stress.

"Even though the park is supposedly off-limits to logging, the forest is losing the ability to regenerate itself," said Curran. Seed predators, who can not find food outside the park, move inside the park to eat the dipterocarp seeds before they germinate. In 1998 the scenario worsened when massive forest fires on nearby logging plantations destroyed an area the size of Costa Rica, brought pollution and intensified El Niño's drought, killing the few remaining dipterocarp seedlings.

"It's very sad, but unless the Indonesian government implements sustainable forestry practices, creates financial incentives to harvest responsibly and prevents clearing and burning for industrial plantations, this ecosystem will be unable to recover," said Curran.

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provided by "Climate News"

China Disasters Century's Deadliest

WASHINGTON (AP) -- China experienced three of the century's four deadliest weather-related disasters, two drought-induced famines that killed more than 29 million people and a Yangtze River flood that claimed 3.7 million lives, U.S. weather experts said Monday. Despite 11,000 deaths in Central America, last year's Hurricane Mitch does not rank near the top of the century's deadliest incidents.

Looking back over the century, experts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that famine brought on by drought generally was deadlier than storms or floods like the Yangtze disaster of 1931. Most of the famine deaths were in Asia. A 1907 episode killed more than 24 million Chinese. Also in China, the ``New Famine'' of 1936 killed an estimated 5 million Chinese, and a drought in 1941-2 more than 3 million. NOAA said estimates of the dead from starvation in Ukraine and the Volga region of Russia, during the early Soviet years 1921-1922, vary from 250,000 to 5 million. Wind and a storm surge from a 1970 cyclone in Bangladesh may have killed as many as half a million.

Climate now is changing faster than ever recorded, said D. James Baker, who heads the federal agency. The agency projected that the United States will record its second warmest year on record this year with an average temperature of 55.7 degrees Fahrenheit, after a record 56.4 degrees in 1998. Global temperatures are expected to finish the year as the fifth warmest on record since 1880, the agency said.

``The new data, the modeling results, and what we know about how the system works is even stronger in pointing toward the fact that we are seeing global warming and it is part of the overall climate change,'' Baker told reporters. NOAA called the United States ``the tornado capital of the world,'' citing an outbreak that swept down the Ohio Valley on March 18, 1925, for a record 3 1/2 hours and killed 695 people Illinois, Missouri and Indiana. More than 200 tornadoes were observed last January, 14 times the average number, NOAA reported. John Kelly Jr., director of the National Weather Service, emphasized progress in understanding and forecasting weather events. ``The Galveston hurricane of 1900 ... struck with little or no warning,'' Kelly said. ``We knew there was a hurricane somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, but at that time our information technology didn't enable us to discern exactly where it was.

``The hurricane had at least 8,000 fatalities. ... Compare that with the warnings and the forecasts that were made for (Hurricane) Floyd as it moved up the East coast this past autumn.''

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El Nino Affecting Carbon Dioxide (New York Times)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The periodic El Nino warming of the Pacific Ocean also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the air -- a chemical some say contributes to global warming -- according to a study being published in Friday's edition of the journal Science. In addition, the massive oceanic changes cause a boom and bust cycle for tiny ocean plants called plankton, which are vital food for fish, the study says.

A team of researchers led by Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute found that the 1997-98 El Nino, and the subsequent ocean cooling called La Nina, had a roller-coaster effect on the oceanic food chain across a vast swath of the Pacific. During the El Nino warm episode, the normal upwelling of cold, deep ocean water was blocked, cutting off the supply of nutrients required by the tiny algae and sharply reducing their numbers, the study found.

In past years it was the cutoff of those rising nutrient-rich waters that tended to be the first sign of an El Nino, because fishermen would notice a sharp drop in their catch due to the lack of food for fish and shrimp. That deep water also contains a lot of stored carbon dioxide which it releases at the surface. By stopping it from rising the El Nino can be credited with reducing the amount of that so-called greenhouse gas being added to the atmosphere.

The researchers calculated that 700 million metric tons of carbon normally released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide were kept in the ocean during the year that El Nino conditions dominated the equatorial Pacific. This is equivalent to half of the United States' total annual carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning. A metric ton is 2,205 pounds.

Many environmentalists have become concerned about possibility that extra carbon dioxide in the air will help trap heat from the sun, somewhat like a greenhouse, causing global warming. The researchers reported they were again surprised in mid-1998 when chlorophyll levels skyrocketed, revealing the largest plankton bloom ever observed in the equatorial Pacific. They suggested that elevated iron concentrations in the rising water stimulated this bloom. Iron is an essential nutrient for plankton growth.

Besides the Monterey Bay institute the team included researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Marine Fisheries Service.

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The authorities in Vietnam have been delivering emergency food to thousands of people who have suffered two bouts of severe flooding in the last month. Farmers in central Vietnam say it is the worst disaster in living memory, and the country is bracing itself for still more rain when a tropical depression in the South China sea hits the southern coastline.

When the flood water came for the second time in a month, many families climbed on top of their homes, tree-tops and even onto to electricity pylons to escape the torrent. In a matter of days, the water rose by several metres and many people had to be rescued by the military or their neighbours. In one of the worst-hit areas, Que Lam, many families described seeing their homes being literally swept away overnight and, with them, all their cooking utensils and belongings.

For several days they have been sleeping in the open, despite the cold temperatures, although they have received dry noodles and rice from the Vietnamese Red Cross. But bringing in relief is not easy because many areas are only accessible by boat at the best of times.

As soon as the flood water subsided, villagers started digging up the sand deposits to unearth the beams and metal sheetings that once formed their homes. Many farmers have started reconstructing simple shelters with what they can salvage. But the long-term costs will be heavy - thousands of people have lost their crops, livestock, homes, possessions and are already in debt for the seeds they have bought after the first flood in November.

Villagers in central Vietnam face flooding every year, but say they have never seen anything like the intensity and scale of the two floods they have just experienced.

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PERTH, Australia (CNN) -- The most powerful cyclone ever recorded in Australia ravaged its northwestern coast Wednesday, forcing hundreds of evacuations and damaging homes before losing strength later in the day. There were no reports of deaths or injuries. Cyclone John, which at its peak had sustained winds of 130 mph and gusts up to 185 mph, moved over land near the tiny community of Whim Creek early Wednesday with driving rains and winds that caused power outages. The storm was heading south- southeast. Reporter Tanya Nollan told CNN she was waiting to hear how the dozen residents of Whim Creek, about 750 miles north of Perth, fared. The community's telephone lines were down, and they had taken overnight refuge in a shipping container that was anchored to the ground with chains and concrete blocks.

'No one has been through one this big' Two evacuation centers were established in Karratha. Jim McDougall, assistant manager of the town's Mercure Inn, said palm fronds had begun to blow off trees and the rain was coming in horizontally. "No one has been through one this big. I just hope the roof stays on," he said. "There's not much you can do, just wait it out." Kevin Richards, a top Karratha city official, compared the strong winds battering the town to the sound of "a never-ending freight train." Nollan said she was evacuated from her home in a low-lying area on Tuesday. She spent the night at a television studio. She said she was concerned about a storm surge. She said the cyclone carried piercing winds, and the rain felt like needles beating into her face. "It was really intense," Nollan said.

Storm heading south-southeast
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Bryan Boase said it was "unequivocally" the strongest cyclone to hit Australia since the government began keeping records. "We're looking at winds of almost 300 kilometers (185 miles) an hour and quite frankly, that's bloody unbelievable," he said. The bureau at one point declared the cyclone a Category 5, the most powerful hurricane. Cyclone is the term used for hurricanes in the Indian Ocean.

Cyclone John lost power as it crossed the coast, and was downgraded to Category 4 later Wednesday. It was still packing winds of 106 mph. The cyclone forced offshore oil fields and iron ore ports to close in the remote, mineral-rich Pilbara region. An official with North Ltd's Robe River iron ore unit said the company had evacuated its Cape Lambert port. Other mineral firms also shut down.

Five miles east.

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