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Is Climate Change Icing Out Rudolph?
Arctic winters increasingly alternate between mild and freezing so the tundra is covered in ice instead of snow, preventing reindeer from digging for food β but longer autumns may help them survive, for now
Β© by GrrlScientist for Forbes | LinkTr.ee
Thanks to climate change, temperatures are rising around the globe, but they are rising fastest at the Poles. Temperature records have shown that in the Arctic, temperatures are rising three times faster than the global annual average. But as climate changes, itβs not just the average temperature that increases, climactic variability increases too, and this is creating many unanticipated environmental problems.
One pervasive problem is the increasing fluctuations between cold and warm temperatures. These temperature variations melt snow and ice and then refreeze the resulting slush into a thick sheet of ice when temperatures drop again. Ice storms are also increasingly frequent: known by climate scientists as rain-on-snow (ROS) events, these ROS events cover the landscape in thick layers of ice.
Researchers are working to better understand the effects of climate change in the Arctic by studying reindeer. Svalbard reindeer, Rangifer platyrhynchus, are the smallest in the world β half the size of mainland reindeer. These tiny reindeer dwell on Svalbard β formerlyβ¦