They went to the Arctic in search of snow. Found rain and flowers

What was once a predictably cold Arctic Winter is now shockingly unrecognizable. Being standing in puddles by the Glacier Terminus, or in the naked and green tundra, is shocking and surreal, says a team of scientists who visited Svalbard.

In February this year, a scientific team led by James BradleyProfessor of Environmental Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, went to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbardwhere he expected to study fresh fresh snow.

But what the research team found was rain, Tundra to discovered, flower vegetation and lakes of melted water.

Their heavy clothes for cold weather turned out to be unnecessary, when the Temperatures went up above the freezing point – exposing the new reality of the Arctic Winter.

In a recently published in Nature Communicationsthe team of investigators highlights the alarming transformation that unfolds in the Arctic Winter.

Svalbard, the archipelago where it is, It’s warm at a pace six to seven times higher than the global average, and their winters are changing even faster, with seasonal temperatures to rise almost twice faster than the annual average.

According to the investigators, these dramatic changes are no longer anomalies but they are becoming integral part of Arctic Climate Evolutionbelow the expectation has long been established that winters in the region would remain cold and predictable.

“Being standing in Water puddles near the Glacier Terminusor in the naked and green tundra, it was shocking and surreal, ”says Bradley.“ The thick snow layer that covered the landscape disappeared within a few days. The equipment that brought looked like a relic of another climate. ”

The team, which expected extreme cold, had prepared with thermal clothesseveral insulating layers and thick gloves. Instead, they ended up working in the glacier in the rain, with your hands discovered.

“The goal of our fieldwork campaign was to study newlywed snow. But for two weeks, we could only collect fresh snow once, because Most of the precipitation fell in the form of rain“, He explains Laura Molas MoncayoDoctoral student at Queen Mary and Natural History Museum and co -author of the study, in a statement from the university published in.

“This absence of snowfall in the middle of winter compromises our ability to establish a representative base line for the processes of the cold season. disturbed our plan sampling, as it also made us question to what extent it is safe or viable to perform Fieldwork in winter Under such a quick conditions of change, ”he concludes.

The unexpected scenario found in Svalbard by the expedition has long been projected projections on the Arctic Amplificationbut also underlines the alarming speed at which these changes are occurring.

The overtaking of Fusion threshold of 0 ° C It has a transformative impact on the physical environment, the dynamics of local ecosystems and the very methodology of conducting scientific research in Arctic during the winter.

The implications of these rapid winter changes to the Arctic Ecosystem are of great reach. Winter heating episodes can disturb everythingfrom the microbial carbon cycle to the survival of Arctic fauna.

These events can also create a Retail cycleaccelerating permafrost defrost, carbon microbial degradation and greenhouse gas release throughout the Arctic.

A observed defrost water accumulation on the cold soilforming vast temporary lakes and reducing snow cover to zero in large areas, further exposes the surface of naked soil and leads to widespread flowers of biological activity.

Unexpected conditions during fieldwork, including fine and muddy snow that made it difficult to access snow motorcycles to study sites, forced researchers to reconsider how, and even can becontinue to do winter science – As so far it was.