{"id":10049,"date":"2017-02-11T13:21:33","date_gmt":"2017-02-11T18:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=10049"},"modified":"2017-02-11T13:21:33","modified_gmt":"2017-02-11T18:21:33","slug":"how-climate-is-changing-at-high-latitudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2017\/02\/how-climate-is-changing-at-high-latitudes\/","title":{"rendered":"How climate is changing at high latitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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. \u00a0Albedo is the reflectivity of the earth’s surface, and snow and ice are very reflective compared to bare ground. \u00a0When 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. \u00a0I discussed this yesterday in my post about the 50F plus temperature anomalies occurring right now over the North Pole. \u00a0Here in the Southeast we don’t get much snow so albedo change\u00a0is 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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em>:\u00a0Floods and erosion are ruining Britain’s most significant sites<\/a><\/p>\n

Climate Change News:<\/em>\u00a0Think Climate Change is a Hoax? Visit Norway<\/a><\/p>\n

Washington Post:<\/em>\u00a0NASA took on an unprecedented study of Greenland\u2019s melting. Now, the data are coming in<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The South Downs and Beachy Head, lighthouse and Seven Sisters cliffs, Eastbourne, UK. The rate off cliff erosion has been much higher over the past 150 years, the study showed. Photograph: Emma Wood\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u00a0Albedo is the reflectivity of the earth’s surface, and snow and ice are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":10050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-climate-science","category-coastal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10051,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10049\/revisions\/10051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}