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Titanic's abysmal end: climate change more than a century too late to prevent it

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Shanta Barley | 13:09 UK time, Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Exactly 107 years ago today, the 'unsinkable' Titanic hit () iceberg and sank several hundred miles south-east of Mistaken Point, Newfoundland. So what are the odds of a modern-day Captain Edward Smith ploughing into an iceberg in the same area today? Slim, it seems. Numbers of icebergs in the region are down since 2003, according to .

Why? Greenland still produces plenty of icebergs - volume is up 60% in the last 10 years - but they are melting before they get a chance to reach Newfoundland, according to marine geologist Christopher Woodworth-Lynas:

'There has been an overall trend toward fewer icebergs making it as far south as Newfoundland,' he , ' The icebergs seem to be thinning out and disappearing. In fact, there's hardly been an iceberg season to speak of on the Grand Bank for the last four or five years.'

For Woodworth-Lynas there is one clear culprit: 'They get destroyed faster because of the changes in temperature,' he says. This would have been good news in 1912, but in 2009 it's hurting Newfoundland and Labrador's tourism industry while potentially opening up the frozen north to oil and gas exploration. Every cloud, eh?

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