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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

A Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer platyrhynchus) searching for food near the top of Fjordnibba, on the south-eastern side of Tempelfjorden on Spitsbergen, in late April. (Credit: BjΓΈrn Christian TΓΈrrissen / CC BY-SA 4.0)

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, it’s 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€” formerly…

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Gardening, Birding, and Outdoor Adventure
Gardening, Birding, and Outdoor Adventure

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𝐆𝐫𝐫π₯π’πœπ’πžπ§π­π’π¬π­, scientist & journalist
𝐆𝐫𝐫π₯π’πœπ’πžπ§π­π’π¬π­, scientist & journalist

Written by 𝐆𝐫𝐫π₯π’πœπ’πžπ§π­π’π¬π­, scientist & journalist

PhD evolutionary ecology/ornithology. Psittacophile. SciComm senior contributor at Forbes, former SciComm at Guardian. Also on Substack at 'Words About Birds'.

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