Climate Change Could Have Wide-Ranging Effects in the Arctic, Study Says

The earlier snowmelt, itself a product of a warming climate, is one of the “positive feedback” factors that accelerate warming in the far north, said Terry Chapin, a professor of ecology at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Each of these changes seems to trigger other changes that mean more changes will occur,” said Chapin, the study’s lead author.

The National Science Foundation-funded study published in the online journal Science Express found spring snowmelt had been occurring about 2 1/2 days earlier per decade, exposing dark ground to solar heat earlier in the season.

Heat absorbed by the ground releases energy into the local atmosphere, about three watts per cubic meter each decade, a change that is heating the local atmosphere and adding incrementally to global warming, Chapin said.

“This heat is added to the atmosphere, so the atmosphere in the north becomes warmer and is mixed with the global atmosphere,” Chapin said.

Summer warming will be amplified two to seven times if trees and bushes continue their northern migration into Alaska’s Arctic, the study also said.

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