Icebergs are shown near Ilulissat, Greenland. (Photo: Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
New Climate Study Predicting More Rain Than Snow in the Arctic ‘Rings Alarm Bells’
Research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications suggests rainfall will become more common in the Arctic than snowfall, and decades sooner than previously thought—findings that elicited fresh warnings about the necessity of ambitious climate action.
“The new models couldn’t be clearer that unless global warming is stopped, the future Arctic will be wetter.”
“As the Arctic continues to warm faster than the rest of the planet, evidence mounts that the region is experiencing unprecedented environmental change,” says the study, spearheaded by Michelle McCrystall, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba.
“The transition from a snow- to rain-dominated Arctic in the summer and autumn is projected to occur decades earlier and at a lower level of global warming, potentially under 1.5°C, with profound climatic, ecosystem, and socioeconomic impacts,” the paper continues, referencing the Paris climate agreement’s lower temperature target for the end of this century.
McCrystall detailed the anticipated consequences of this transition, which is happening because of rapid global heating, poleward moisture transport, greater Arctic amplification, sea-ice loss, and increased sensitivity of precipitation to regional warming.
“People might say, ‘Well, what has that got to do with me?’ Well, this is going to affect you, and in actual fact, it is affecting you now,” McCrystall said in a statement. “For me, I think what people need to understand is, we live in a global society where everything is interconnected, and that’s true of the climate. We have a global climate. So, what happens in one region, will affect what happens everywhere else.”
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