According to recent studies, the Arctic becomes brown.
Color of vegetation covering the Northern region of the Arctic in the summer, changing from green to brown and grey, according to satellite images.
This phenomenon may be associated with global warming in the Earth’s climate, according to the Norwegian NRK resource, citing data from local scientists.
In the past 30 years the warming Arctic climate has led to a significant increase in the number of green vegetation in the polar regions of Canada, Norway and Russia, as well as on the island of Greenland, told the officer of the Norwegian research Centre for the ecology and climate of the far North “FRAM” Jarle Bjerke.
According to him, this has led to the emergence of the concept of “green Arctic”. In recent years, in the same regions can clearly be seen the reverse trend: the number of summer vegetation in the Arctic has decreased markedly over the past five years and it was mostly brown.
Scientists are unable to give specific predictions about what consequences will lead a new trend. However, they fear that large-scale changes occurring with the polar flora, can affect the pace of permafrost thawing. If the ice will melt faster, freed up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, which can cause the greenhouse effect and lead to further climate warming.
In early may 2016, the Russian hydrometeorological center announced record warming in the Northern hemisphere. The largest anomalies of mean temperature were observed in the Arctic in the Kara and Barents seas, on Novaya Zemlya and the Yamal Peninsula — to plus 8 degrees Celsius.
