Climate change ‘will result in green Arctic’

Climate change will transform the arctic’s snowy landscape until it is green and features trees and shrubs.

This is the startling finding of a recent study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

It was revealed that green areas in the Arctic could grow by up to 50 per cent in the next few decades.

This is because as climate change alters the world’s temperatures, such previously hostile environments will be able to support plants, meaning they will thrive at higher latitudes than they currently do.

The changing environment of the Arctic will also impact on the rest of the world, as the landscape begins to absorb more heat from the sun thanks to its changed colours. This is because lighter colours such as sea ice and snow reflect light back to space, thereby contributing to an overall colder environment.

Meanwhile, darker colours such as trees and shrubs are more able to absorb sunlight, thereby warming the environment.

According to the authors of the paper, while the trees will also take in carbon dioxide from the air, this will not be enough to offset the overall darkening effect. Therefore, the region will still have a bigger warming impact than was previously believed.

Study researcher Scott Goetz, from the Woods Hole Research Center, commented that these changes "will result in an overall positive feedback to climate that is likely to cause greater warming than has previously been predicted.”

His fellow researcher Richard Pearson commented: "These impacts would extend far beyond the Arctic region.

"For example, some species of birds seasonally migrate from lower latitudes and rely on finding particular polar habitats, such as open space for ground-nesting."

This follows a warning that climate change “will cause extreme weather” by the UK government’s outgoing chief scientific adviser Sir John Beddington.

He warned that the effects of climate change are already being felt in the UK, which has been experiencing some unseasonal weather over the past few weeks.