Climatologists know that the most likely place to first see the impacts of a warmer world is in the Arctic, where feedbacks due to snow and sea ice and their effect on the albedo make climate very sensitive to small temperature variations. Albedo is the reflectivity of the earth’s surface, and snow and ice are very reflective compared to bare ground. When areas of snow or sea ice are replaced by snowless tundra or open ocean, there are big changes to the energy budget of the area because much less sunlight is reflected back to space and instead is absorbed by the surface, increasing temperatures there greatly. I discussed this yesterday in my post about the 50F plus temperature anomalies occurring right now over the North Pole. Here in the Southeast we don’t get much snow so albedo change is less of a factor in our local climate (although may have some impacts when areas change from bare ground to forests or from cropland to cities, for example).
Here are some stories I’ve seen in the news this week about changes that are now being observed in two northern countries and how they are impacting conditions there, and one story about an Arctic scientific program with the acronym OMG (yes, really!) studying the ocean circulation around Greenland and how that is affecting the melting of the ice cap there.
The Guardian: Floods and erosion are ruining Britain’s most significant sites
Climate Change News: Think Climate Change is a Hoax? Visit Norway
Washington Post: NASA took on an unprecedented study of Greenland’s melting. Now, the data are coming in
