Thunderstorms, T-Shirt Weather & Slate-Wiped Nestings In An Arctic That's Coming Apart

[hatrack]

EDIT

Each spring for the last 30 years, our team of biologists has traveled to remote field camps in Arctic Alaska. The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else in the world as seawater replaces sea ice, painting the Arctic Ocean blue and fueling a dangerous feedback loop. The white sea ice reflects the sun’s energy back into space through what is known as the albedo effect. But as the ice melts, the dark Arctic seawater is now absorbing that heat, turning up the earth’s temperature. With the early spring, snow melted roughly two weeks earlier than in the past and plants turned green soon after. Lakes thawed about 10 days earlier, and Arctic grayling, a fish, bred weeks earlier.

An early spring has long-term consequences. When grayling breed three weeks earlier, for instance, their offspring get a head start on feeding and grow nine times larger. This might seem like a good thing, until you consider that the same warmer temperatures dry the rivers that enable these grayling to swim to lakes where they spend the winter. As these fish wait in shallow pools for the rivers to flow, bears and birds enjoy a captive feast. If rivers do not flow before winter, the fish freeze. The drying of these rivers could threaten some grayling populations.

Last May’s warmth deceived white-crowned sparrows into breeding earlier than usual. When a snowstorm roared in, the sparrows abandoned their ill-timed nests, leaving their eggs behind to perish. Thunderstorms also raged over our camp. These storms used to be rare in the Arctic, but they strike often now. Lightning has set fire to the tundra, releasing into the atmosphere huge stores of ancient carbon from the permafrost. Sinkholes are also opening up in the thawing tundra. Walk up to one, and you will hear the trickle and clatter as heat dissolves permafrost into cascades of ice age mud and stones.

We are only just beginning to understand these changes. Ecosystems involve a complex web of connections among species and the physical environment. Climate change alters these connections in ways that can surprise and baffle us.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/opinion/t-shirt-weather-in-the-arctic.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0

[daleanime]

1. kick, kick, kick....

Now let's see if anyone is keeping their eyes on the important issues.

[LiberalArkie]

2. Thank God I am in my late 60's. I feel to get anything done, we literally need to have riots

and protests like in the 60's and 70's.

[NickB79]

4. I'm 35 with a 5 yr old daughter to care for :-(

The future is going to suck so very, very hard.

[Old Codger]

3. I am afraid

That this is exponential and we either are past the point of no return or very very close to it..