September 27, 2007
Severity of Arctic Heat Wave Stuns Int'l Polar-Year Researchers
Extreme and unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer have forced a Queen's University-led climate-change project to revise their forecasts. "Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed," reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project. "It's something we'd envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable."
The speed of the warming-trend acceleration does not surprise students of past climate-change cycles on the planet, which occurred over decades rather than hundreds or thousands of years.
Dr. Lamoureux's new four-year project on remote Melville Island in the northwest Arctic brings together scientists and educators from three Canadian universities and the territory of Nunavut. They are studying how the amount of water will vary as climate changes, and how that affects the water quality and ecosystem sustainability of plants and animals that depend on it.
The information will be key to improving models for predicting future climate change in the High Arctic, which is critical to the everyday living conditions of people living there, especially through the lakes and rivers where they obtain their drinking water.
From their camp on Melville Island last July, where they recorded air temperatures over 20ºC (in an area with July temperatures that average 5ºC), the team watched in amazement as water from melting permafrost a meter below ground lubricated the topsoil, causing it to slide down slopes, clearing everything in its path and thrusting up ridges at the valley bottom "that piled up like a rug," says Dr. Lamoureux, an expert in hydro-climatic variability and landscape processes.
"The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes. A major river was dammed by a slide along a 200-metre length of the channel. River flow will be changed for years, if not decades to come."
Comparing this summer's observations against aerial photos dating back to the 1950s, and the team's monitoring of the area for the past five years, the research leader calls the present conditions "unprecedented" in scope and activity. What's most interesting, he says, is that their findings represent the impact of just one exceptional summer.
"A considerable amount of vegetation has been disturbed and we observed a sharp rise in erosion and a change in sediment load in the river," Dr. Lamoureux notes. "With warmer conditions and greater thaw depth predicted, the cumulative effect of this happening year after year could create huge problems for both the aquatic and land populations. This kind of disturbance also has important consequences for existing and future infrastructure in the region, like roads, pipelines and air strips."
If this were to occur in more inhabited parts of Canada, it would be "catastrophic" in terms of land use and resources, he continues.
Posted by Casey Kazan. Adapted from a Queens News Centre release, courtesy of Scott Lamoureux.
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Nancy Dorrance, Queen's News & Media Services, 613.533.2869, nancy.dorrance@queensu.ca, Molly Kehoe, 613.533.2877, molly.kehoe@queensu.ca, Queen's News & Media Services.
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