Newswise — Russian and American scientists are studying the dramatic climate changes of northern Europe and Asia to better predict future weather pattern shifts worldwide.
Their findings are expected to help policymakers develop strategies to overcome negative effects of the climate variations on global agriculture and economies.
Purdue University Climate Change Research Center scientist Laura Bowling is co-principal investigator on two NASA-funded Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative projects. One study is examining interactions of ice cover, water management, land use and climate that impact water flow, temperature, droughts and floods. Researchers are particularly interested in changes during the past 50 years when temperature increases in the Arctic region have been unprecedented and ice melt has accelerated dramatically.
Bowling and another research team also are investigating how carbon emissions are affected by changes in the region's lake and wetland areas. Soil moisture levels influence how much temperature-warming greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere.
In both studies, Russian scientists are providing historical data and collecting new information that the American scientists will analyze using advanced technological tools.
"There are many reasons northern Eurasia is interesting for climate change studies," said Bowling, who evaluates how global climate and water quality and quantity are affected by land management and land use. "The region has been ravaged environmentally with a history of forest depletion, building of many dams for water management and mining. Interactions between these human activities and the ecosystem impact climate in the region and possibly worldwide."
Environmental and climate change information gathered by Russian scientists shows temperatures in northern Eurasia rose 4-7 degrees Fahrenheit during the past 50 years.
"We have a lot of evidence that warming already has started in the Arctic region, of which northern Eurasia is a part," Bowling said. "Once you start melting the snow and ice, you've reduced the Earth's protective layer, and then the surface warms faster."
The ice and snow cover layer, called the cryosphere, protects the planet from overheating. When the cryosphere melts, it affects land and ocean temperatures worldwide. Ice reflects light and bounces it back into space, but when ice cover melts, less light is reflected, causing water and soil to heat up more and hold heat longer.
A recent NASA study found that during the last half century, Arctic sea ice has diminished about 1.5 percent each decade. In the past two years that rate increased at least 10 to 15 fold. The agency also reported that winter sea ice had shrunk about 40 percent in two years in one part of the Arctic region.
The region's shrinking and thinning sea ice layer over the past three decades has been so dramatic that polar bears' feeding and breeding grounds are shrinking, and their hunting season is shorter. The result is smaller bears that produce 15 percent fewer offspring, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Many bears have to swim so far to find food that they are drowning.
Because of glacier and iceberg melt-off into the Arctic Ocean, increasing amounts of fresh water flows into salt water. This can alter ocean circulation patterns because of the density difference between fresh and salt water.
In that way, climate change, often thought of as global warming, also could cause cooling in some areas, according to some experts.
"Theoretically, according to some oceanographers, if you dump enough fresh water into the Arctic Ocean, you can shutdown deep water systems in the north Atlantic, stopping ocean circulation, and then England freezes," she said.
At the same time, the Arctic ice cap could disappear by the end of the century, according to experts. Changing temperatures and precipitation that cause shifting drought and frost patterns could destroy forests and agriculture, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
NASA is funding both three-year studies. Since the space agency's founding in 1958, its basic tenet has been to improve life on Earth, according to the mission statement approved by Congressional legislation. This includes not only studying outer space but also changes in climate and land usage, and water and air pollution. NASA launched the world's first weather satellite in 1960.
Bowling's collaborators on the climate, land cover and water management study are Eric Wood, Princeton University, and Alexander Oltche of Severtsov, Institute of Evolution and Ecology Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dennis Lettenmaier, University of Washington, is lead researcher on the wetlands study. Kyle McDonald, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a co-principal investigator.
Related Web sites:
Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative: http://neespi.org/
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html
National Academies of Science: http://www.nationalacademies.org/
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