Why is the arctic tundra fragile
How will the melting of the Arctic affect YOU? | A New Climate
the Arctic is warming twice as fast as
anywhere else a fragile ecosystem is
being lost and the effects are
reverberating around the whole planet
whatever you think you know about
climate change in the frozen north the
reality is far worse what's happening to
the Arctic matters to us all it is the
Arctic as he would imagine it to be
ice stretching to the horizon remote and
rugged but look closer and the glass
ears are pockmarked with ponds of blue
meltwater
small bird halfway between mainland
Norway and the North Pole is thawing and
it's happening within a human lifetime
I've come to Nielson the most northerly
research base on earth joining
scientists in a fast-changing natural
laboratory there is no better place to
understand the impact of global warming
every iceberg tells a story and Jack
Cola can read it we can really see the
the grooves on the top of this Berg that
show what it looks like at the bottom of
the glacier he grew up in Philadelphia
but the ador of ice drew him to the
Arctic and drifting through chunks that
have tumbled from the towering wall
never loses its thrill glass ears are
constantly on the move rivers of ice
flowing downhill and where they meet
water they carve it's essentially dead
ice and so this is just being eaten away
and and of course it is the the warm
water and the few word that is
responsible to a large degree for this
increase in calving jack has been coming
here since the 90s and watched the
glacier shrink and starting in the early
2000s we have a very rapid retreat
averaging around two and a half
kilometers across the entire front level
the sea level rise will continue and it
will accelerate in the future that is
the problem with Arctic ice loss and
that won't offend people a long way away
from me all over the world
don't buy oceanfront property
a hundred years ago this moon skate was
covered by a glacier now the ice is a 40
minute walk uphill we follow the
meltwater a soup of sediment scoured
from the rocks Jack's taking me to its
source this is all surface water that is
running on the surface and then forming
deep channels that become so deep that
there in the end turned it to tunnels up
on the surface channels crisscross the
glacier it's melting quite literally
before our eyes Jack uses a pole he
planted in the ice five months ago to
keep track when we installed this stake
in spring the ice surface was at the top
this much ice has disappeared since
April when we put the stake in and in
addition there was also snow on top of
that ice which also disappeared so the
ice level was there and now we're
standing on the ice obviously so that's
2 meters 37 oh I see yeah goodness me
there are 14,000 square miles of ice on
Svalbard all melting this amount is
unprecedented and that is sea level rise
around the world what happens in the
Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic the
ice isn't just melting on land is
melting at sea the Lord used to freeze
over every winter but it hasn't done so
in more than a decade
far out to see the ice is proving harder
to find every year scientists from the
Norwegian polar Institute sail hundreds
of miles from spar bar to Greenland
Laura Doster is just back and it's not
good news
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open areas of ocean which is then warmed
up by the by the zone and we could reach
Greenland's almost without being in the
sea ice it's the reason why the Arctic
is warming so fast white sea ice
reflects most of the sun's heat the dark
ocean absorbs it melts more ice and then
warms faster it's a vicious circle so
now the sea ice gets attacked from both
sides from the atmosphere as well as
from the ocean how soon do you think we
will see an ice-free Arctic depends a
little bit of course while the actions
are of you were humanity what we are
doing in the next 10 20 years
but if we continue like this it's maybe
not unrealistic to say 20 to 30 years
path catastrophic for species that
depend on the ice
belugas use it to hide from killer
whales now they're increasingly exposed
and polar bears use it to hunt migrate
and play
in some parts of the Arctic they're
starving and numbers are falling the
polar bear is charismatic a symbol for
an entire ecosystem that is in trouble
we see changes in the plankton in the
fjord we see changes in which fish we
have here we see changes and plants on
land and the birds around us him has
been monitoring small birds changing
climate for 30 years he warns the
effects are now rippling across the
whole planet disrupting weather systems
thousands of miles away the
Mediterranean will become drier than
northern Scandinavia will become wetter
but it can also have as far-reaching
influences as on the monsoon of India it
has to do with food security of the
planet so we will all be affected we
will all be affected
Svalbard climate is also changing fast
the average winter temperature has risen
by 10 degrees in 30 years there's now
more rain even in what should be the
coldest months of the year and this is
just 800 miles from the North Pole no
one knows more about Svalbard wild
reindeer than a salon Vic Peterson she
spends weeks tracking animals across the
tundra always armed in case of polar
bears the new climate has improved
grazing in the warmer summers the rain
in winter can spell trouble it can be
quite heavy and it can be sustained for
several days and once we've done again
freezes it will make the ice over the
over the plants so and that will make
plants inaccessible they can't use the
hooves to get through these nice know
that often that ice is too thick and
they can't think through for some
reindeer particularly the young and the
old the ice can prove fatal this
reindeer had probably starved to death
so it died quite early this winter we
can see that because it's still having
yeah it has the antlers on it has really
white winter fur the high mortality
rates this year correspondent probably
with some really bad winter rain that we
had before Christmas that could have
locked up much of the grazing grounds
the rain is also a threat to people
who've made spa barred their home
Longyearbyen is the only major town
squeezed between steep mountains in thei
birth guard with coming down the hill
the permafrost ground frozen for
thousands of years is thawing and acting
as a sponge for rain in 2016 the
saturated soil high up on the slope tore
down hill just missing the cemetery we
want this to be a safe place both for
the living who come here to visit the
graves of the dear ones but also of
course for the graves and selves you do
not want it to kind of well will the
grave still be there in a few years so
will it kind of be washed away by a
landslide the Arctic's permafrost can be
hundreds of meters deep just the surface
thor's each summer but the warming is
penetrating deeper underground and
there's a hidden threat scientists are
trying to understand then you can see
that there's some very brown organics
the river has exposed dead plant matter
from 4000 years ago that has been
preserved in the frozen ground as the
temperature increases the plants start
to rot and release greenhouse gases
permafrost is an invisible thing because
of its just a temperature condition in
the ground but what it consists of is
the really important thing in order to
understand how can interact and affect
the atmosphere across the Arctic there
are billions of tons of carbon locked
away underground if it's released
suddenly it could be a tipping point for
the climate a carbon bomb that rapidly
increases global temperatures
hey but you don't need to be a scientist
in Svalbard to notice the changing
climate
hey Alden Salter has more than a hundred
Alsatian Huskies bred for their
long-distance running in the cold now
it's getting too warm doesn't matter
where you go in the Arctic where they
use dogs probably on sea ice is a
natural thing that's gonna be hard when
the ice goes away Aldens dogs
increasingly have to pull buggies rather
than traditional sleds as the snow
season gets shorter it's not nice being
the generation that will be remembered
in history as the idiots that didn't do
anything before it was too late
scientists have peered into the Arctic's
future and it's not good
glaciers will retreat to higher ground
the last of the summer sea ice will be
confined to a small patch of ocean north
of Canada and Greenland and the longer
we delay cuts to greenhouse gases the
more of the Arctic will be lost this
frozen landscape is part of the planets
cooling system many will never see it
but if it does disappear we will all
feel it it is relentless there's no
going back it's not over until it's over
we can still save some of the Arctic the
faster we do it the less hardship the
less costs and the less loss of
ecosystems it is urgent we must do
everything we can today
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