A team of scientists led by François Lapointe, a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has combined paleoclimatic data from the last 2,000 years with powerful computer modeling and in-the-field research on lake sediments and tree rings to show that an understudied phenomenon, known as atmospheric blocking, has long influenced temperature swings in the Arctic.
A team of scientists led by François Lapointe, a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has combined paleoclimatic data from the last 2,000 years with powerful computer modeling and in-the-field research on lake sediments and tree rings to show that an understudied phenomenon, known as atmospheric blocking, has long influenced temperature swings in the Arctic. As temperatures warm due to climate change, atmospheric blocking will help drive ever-wilder weather events. The study focused on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago, Svalbard, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, and was published in Nature Communications.
It is well known that the Arctic is warming faster than the global average, a phenomenon known as Arctic Amplification. But, since 1991, Svalbard has experienced a warming trend that is double the Arcticwide rise in temperature. Consequently, the archipelago has been experiencing massive loss of ice, extreme rainfall events and landslides. “We wanted to know why Svalbard has been warming so much faster than the rest of the Arctic,” says Raymond Bradley, Distinguished Professor at UMass Amherst and co-author of the study, “and to figure out whether or not these trends would continue.”
To do so, they turned to lake sediments from Lake Linné, on the west coast of Svalbard, to help them reconstruct warm and wet conditions during the past 2,000 years. What makes this lake unique is the presence of instruments that have been deployed since 2012 by UMass Amherst alumnus and co-author, Michael Retelle, currently professor of earth and climate sciences at Bates College. These instruments track the precise timing of sediment entering the lake each year. Sediment pours into the lake during the increasingly frequent freak rainstorms.
Read more at University of Massachusetts Amherst
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