By Tim Querengesser

When it comes to tracking climate change, the world is using only one thermometre in Canada's Arctic. The Ottawa Citizen recently reported that far fewer Canadian weather stations are being included in global temperature sampling than in the past, from a high of close to 600 in the 1970s to just 35 today. And in the thick of concerns about climate change in the North, only one of them, at Eureka, is being used as the sample for Canada's entire landmass north of the Arctic Circle.

The Citizen story points out that Environment Canada believes climate scientists watching trends in temperature "may be underestimating" the warming in the Arctic because they are sampling so few weather stations.

It isn't because we don't have weather stations in the Arctic. The Citizen story points out that Canada operates more than 100 of them in the high Arctic. But only the Eureka station is being included in data sampled by the World Meteorological Organization.

There are several theories for why this is happening but still no official word from Environment Canada.

What do you think about this situation? Let us know with a comment.