Arctic may turn green again
The Arctic region may lose ice, scientists from the University of Colorado in Boulder (USA) have found. During the last interglacial period, 125 thousand years ago, shrubs and forests stretched to the coast of the Arctic Ocean. In the course of the current global warming, the Arctic may turn green again, according to PNAS .
Scientists have explored the northernmost region of North America. They extracted DNA samples from plants over 100,000 years old from lake sediments and analyzed them. It turned out that during the interglacial period, the shrubs grew 400 kilometers north than today.
The authors of the scientific work emphasized that this was the last historical period when the Arctic was warmer than it is now. Their research helped not only to learn more about the past, but also to make a probable forecast for the future.
The key species of the Arctic tundra is the dwarf birch. Now its range is limited to the southern part of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic – in areas closer to the pole, the plant will no longer survive. But scientists were able to find its DNA much further beyond this limit.
“This is quite a significant difference from the distribution of tundra plants today,” the study said.
The presence of vegetation affects the general climate of the region. For example, plants make the Earth's surface darker, which is why it absorbs more heat – as a result, the temperature rises. Knowing how their area changes depending on climatic fluctuations, it is possible to make more accurate forecasts, experts noted.
Earlier it was reported that ancient plants were found under the Greenland ice. They showed that the island was once devoid of ice.
