How the Arctic is becoming greener and greener

Environment · Rudi Bressa · 2016-06-10

Using satellite data, Nasa has been able to monitor 10 million square metres, from Canada to Alaska. The tundra is already changing.

These are images that strike you because they confirm what is happening in the Arctic. Images of a land that is becoming greener and greener: the tundra is giving way to another type of vegetation, which changes from season to season.

artico — 29 years of images in a single shot show how Alaska and Canada are becoming greener and greener. Photo via Nasa

This is what Nasa has revealed, which, by collecting more than 87,000 images taken between 1984 and 2012, has managed to produce an extremely detailed map (down to the individual pixel) of the entire Arctic area, from Canada to Alaska. The study shows how temperatures are rising faster in the Arctic than elsewhere: this means that growing seasons are lengthening and plants have more time to grow and increase their density. This has repercussions on the landscape, the soils and the water cycle.

The tundra marks the boundary where trees are unable to grow given average temperatures that are too low and a summer season that is too short. But the biome is changing, rapidly. "This work shows the impact of climate on vegetation at higher latitudes", explains Jeffrey Masek, a researcher who worked on the study and a scientist at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement from the agency. In plain terms, this means that the Arctic is trending towards becoming ever greener.

Ice could disappear from the Arctic

Nasa's study goes hand in hand with that carried out by the Us National Snow & Ice Data Centre, which measures the area covered by Arctic ice. Arctic ice measures just over 11 million square kilometres in June, whereas the average over the past 30 years stood at around 12.7 million.

"My prediction is that the ice could disappear from the Arctic", Professor Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge confirms to the Independent. In any case, "it would have an extent of less than one million square kilometres by September of this year". This would be happening for the first time in around 100,000 years.

Once again we are faced with a cry of alarm from the scientific community, which does nothing other than report what is happening and what the consequences could be. The equilibrium reached over thousands of years is now rapidly dissolving.