In the 2011 Arctic Report Card, scientists concluded that the Arctic environment has undergone a fundamental shift in conditions, and that the Arctic of recent years—warmer, greener, less icy—is likely to be the new normal for the Far North. One sign of the ongoing transformation of the Arctic is the spread of shrubs across the [...]
Signal: species shift
Plants and animals migrating to the poles at 10 miles per decade
…the greater the warming in any given region, the farther its plants and animals have migrated, according to the largest analysis to date of the rapidly shifting ranges of species in Europe, North America, Chile and Malaysia. “The more warming there’s been in an area, the more you would expect a species to move, and [...]
Antarctic grass spreading as temps rise
There are no trees on the frozen continent and only two species of flowering plant Antarctic hairgrass and Antarctic pearlwort, that grow on the western peninsula and surrounding islands.A team of UK and Australian scientists has found that the hairgrass has spread over the last 50 years due to global warming. Dr Paul Hill, of [...]
Gentoo penguins replacing Adélie cousins as ice disappears
Since 1974, Fraser, a researcher with the Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research LTER and president of Polar Oceans Research Group, has been studying the ecosystem of the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula, where the midwinter temperature has risen 11°F in just 60 years, making it one of the three most rapidly warming regions on the planet. Since the [...]
