Arctic Tundra Greens Rapidly While Boreal Dries & Burns, Study Finds

[hatrack]

It’s true: the Arctic is more green in summer — although this greening may be a sign that global warming will hit the world more quickly and harder than previously forecast. Anyone looking around last summer in Iqaluit saw an amazing carpet of soft green grasses and thousands of colourful flowers. This sight is even visible from space, where satellites circling the polar regions have picked up an increasing amount of vegetation in the higher latitudes during the summer.

A new study of these satellite images confirms the tundra is becoming, on average, greener from one year to the next. Analyses of a 22-year record of satellite observations show that for about 10 years the high latitudes have been greening in response to the warmer temperatures — that is, tundra vegetation is starting to grow earlier in the spring and continuing to grow more intensely during the summer

All land surfaces above 50° N, excluding the glaciers of Greenland, were included in a study in the current issue of Earth Interactions. “Greening is, in fact, happening in the tundra areas — they are greener in the summer than they have ever been before,” said Andrew Bunn, a scientist at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts, and one of the authors of this study.

But this same growth and greening isn’t happening over big chunks of boreal forest to the south. Even after masking out the impact from forest fires, Bunn said he was surprised to see sub-Arctic boreal forests are not thriving. During the first 10 years of warming temperatures, boreal forests grew vigorously, but, from 1994 to 2002, growth in many places slowed as temperatures climbed and the forest dried out.

EDIT

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/climate/60602_01.html

[Teaser]

1. EXCELLENT!

all of my plans are bearing their evil fruit.

[corkhead]

2. Greenland should be green, it has been false advertising IMHO

:sarcasm:

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Shame about Iceland, in that case.

:evilgrin: