SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
An abnormal season of intense glacial melt in 2002 triggered multiple distinct changes in the physical and biological characteristics of Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys over the ensuing decade.
The findings suggest that even abrupt, short-lived climate events can cause long-term alterations in polar regions that unfold over the span of several years and subsequently change the overall trajectory of an ecosystem.
The new research appears in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV) are the largest ice-free region of Antarctica and are considered a polar desert environment due to their low humidity and scarce precipitation. Now in its 25th year, the National Science Foundation's McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) has provided a continuous multi-decade record of atmospheric and ecological data at the MDV research site.
Between 1987 and 2000, the MDV region experienced a period of cooling, during which mean summer temperatures steadily declined while solar radiation gradually increased. The trend resulted in expected changes to most biological variables, including decreased streamflow and increased thickness of permanent ice covers on lakes.
In 2002, however, the MDV experienced an abnormally warm and sunny summer season, triggering the greatest amount of glacial meltwater since 1969. The abrupt event prompted numerous changes in the lakes, streams and soils of the MDV over the following decade.
Journal Reference:
Michael N. Gooseff, et. al., Decadal ecosystem response to an anomalous melt season in a polar desert in Antarctica. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0253-0
(Score: 2) by Some call me Tim on Wednesday August 09 2017, @07:33PM (2 children)
Maybe in human terms, but that is an insignificant length of time when measuring Earths climate. How about you do that study for 10,000 years or more, graph it all out and show your work. Then we can determine if the event in 2002 is abnormal or not. If I've missed something obvious by not reading the linked article, feel free to call me out. Digging out stumps in the back yard makes me grumpy. ;-)
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Wednesday August 09 2017, @08:15PM
Yes, changes that last a decade are long compared to the few months of summer that started it.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday August 10 2017, @05:32PM
If you see something happen the same way 20 times, and then you see it happen differently the 21st time, you'd certainly call that an outlier based on given data, no?
Nobody doubts 100-year events. It's still interesting to see what they are.
Oh, and also, you can look at ice cores and soil composition and sequoia rings and that kind of thing to look at climate data over very long timescales. I doubt that's really applicable here but it's how we have more data than the century or so that we've had good weather logs.
-Love, ants_in_pants