A study published in today’s issue of Current Biology has shown a surprising change in the arrival of spring. Their ten years of research has shown that spring in the High Arctic has been commencing weeks earlier than in the mid 1990s.
The team of Danish and American researchers have spent a decade from 1996-2005 following the habits of twenty one species; six plants, twelve insects and three birds. All of this was done in a 19 square kilometre area near Zackenberg in Greenland.
On average the ice has been melting 14.6 days earlier in this part of north eastern Greenland due to the rapid warming in this area. A warming that is twice that of the global average. This had led to the plants of the region flowering earlier and birds laying their eggs weeks earlier in the year than they would have done a decade ago.
One of the co-authors, Toke Hoye, from the University of Aarhus said, “We were particularly surprised to see the trends were so strong when considering that the entire summer is very short in the High Arctic – just three or four months from snow melt to freeze-up.”
With the findings also comes another warning about our planets changing climate – the rapid shift in temperature of the region and the longer summers could drastically affect the ecosystem and the food chain. The environment is changing at a rate that is too high for evolution to keep pace.
In the short term it could prove beneficial to local species as the longer summer will give them more time to mature and as a result a better chance of surviving the harsh winter that follows. But in the long run it will mean that other species from a more southern latitude may be able to head further north increasing competition for food.
The change seen at the northern extremes of the planet are much greater than the global average of spring arriving 5.6 days sooner per decade. Europe is even less than this at 2.5 days per decade. Recent research by 17 nations covering 175,000 studies involving 561 species has shown that in Europe spring is arriving 6-8 days earlier than it did 30 years ago.
This can be seen as a stark warning that affects of global warming, whatever the cause, are very real. The temperatures are rising and the planet is changing – and these results show that these changes aren’t even gradual. They are drastic and affecting organisms across the entire planet.
