Today, more snow than rain falls in the Arctic, but this is expected to reverse by the end of the century. A new study shows the frequency of rainy days in the Arctic could roughly double by 2100.
The Arctic is the northernmost region of the Earth, encompassing the Arctic Ocean and northernmost parts of Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Greenland. As the planet warms, more frequent and intense Arctic rainfall events are expected to encroach farther toward the center of the Arctic Ocean and inland Greenland, “which means the arrival of a new Arctic,” said Tingfeng Dou, a climate scientist at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of the new study. The study was published today in Earth’s Future, AGU’s journal for interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants.
“In the past, rainfall was primarily limited to the edges of the Greenland ice sheet,” Dou said. “In the future, this will radically change because rainfall will expand further into inland locations and be a catalyst for further ablation of the ice sheet.”
The shift to a rainier Arctic is expected to increase permafrost melt, releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases, and to speed up the loss of sea ice cover, which will likely trigger consequences for Arctic ecology and Indigenous peoples, as well as communities around the world. (Antarctica is predicted to undergo a similar doubling of raininess by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario.)
Read more at American Geophysical Union
Photo Credit: Gary Bembridge via Wikimedia Commons
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