{"id":196419,"date":"2019-10-17T06:27:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T06:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=196419"},"modified":"2019-10-19T05:46:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T05:46:07","slug":"extreme-snow-stopped-plants-and-animals-breeding-in-parts-of-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=196419","title":{"rendered":"Extreme snow stopped plants and animals breeding in parts of Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Le Page \u2013 New Scientist Oct 15, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Arctic foxes didn\u2019t breed in north-east Greenland in 2018 due to heavy snow. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Increasingly extreme Arctic weather could threaten the survival of wildlife, biologists are warning. In 2018, it snowed so heavily that many areas remained covered in snow well into the summer, preventing almost all plants and animals from breeding.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf this is a one-time event, it\u2019s not an issue,\u201d says Niels Martin Schmidt at Aarhus University in Denmark. Arctic wildlife can cope with occasional bad years, he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he fears that this kind of extreme weather<\/a><\/strong><\/span> could become much more common, potentially leading to the extinction of some species. \u201cThis could be a glimpse into the future,\u201d says Schmidt.<\/span><\/p>\n

He is part of a team that has been monitoring ecosystems around Zackenberg in north-east Greenland for more than 20 years. The growing season there is very short\u00a0\u2013 just July and August \u2013 so if the ground remains covered by snow it has a major impact.\u00a0\u201cThe window for plant growth is very narrow,\u201d he says<\/span><\/p>\n

During the past 23 years, on average only 4 per cent of land has still been covered by snow by the third week of July \u2013 the height of summer. In 2018, it was 45 per cent. For the first time since monitoring began, almost all plants and animals\u00a0\u2013 including Arctic foxes<\/strong><\/span><\/a> and musk ox<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \u2013 failed to breed. Some migratory birds starved to death as they waited for the snow to melt.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was heavy snow\u00a0across much of the Arctic in 2018, not just north-east Greenland, says team member Tomas Roslin at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. \u201cIt was fairly widespread,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

While many people assume that a warming world means less snow, this isn\u2019t the case<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in colder regions. Cold air can\u2019t hold much moisture, limiting snowfall. As the Arctic warms and the sea ice shrinks more each summer, the atmosphere there gets moister, meaning more snow can fall when conditions are right.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, the weather has flipped from one extreme to another, with so little snow falling that a lack of water was limiting plant growth during the summer. \u201cPeople don\u2019t realise water availability is one of the limiting resources in large parts of the Arctic,\u201d says Roslin.<\/span><\/p>\n

The changing weather isn\u2019t just a problem for wildlife. There\u2019s growing evidence that the warming in the Arctic is causing more extreme weather<\/strong><\/span><\/a> across much of the northern hemisphere by affecting the polar jet stream<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, which could hit crop yields and lead to \u201cfood shocks<\/strong><\/span>\u201d<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Usually only 4 percent of land is still covered by snow by the 3rd week of July – the height of summer. In 2018, it was 45 percent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ClimateGate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196419"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196460,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196419\/revisions\/196460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}