Publication Date:
2005-09-24
Description:
A major challenge in predicting Earth's future climate state is to understand feedbacks that alter greenhouse-gas forcing. Here we synthesize field data from arctic Alaska, showing that terrestrial changes in summer albedo contribute substantially to recent high-latitude warming trends. Pronounced terrestrial summer warming in arctic Alaska correlates with a lengthening of the snow-free season that has increased atmospheric heating locally by about 3 watts per square meter per decade (similar in magnitude to the regional heating expected over multiple decades from a doubling of atmospheric CO2). The continuation of current trends in shrub and tree expansion could further amplify this atmospheric heating by two to seven times.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Chapin, F S 3rd -- Sturm, M -- Serreze, M C -- McFadden, J P -- Key, J R -- Lloyd, A H -- McGuire, A D -- Rupp, T S -- Lynch, A H -- Schimel, J P -- Beringer, J -- Chapman, W L -- Epstein, H E -- Euskirchen, E S -- Hinzman, L D -- Jia, G -- Ping, C-L -- Tape, K D -- Thompson, C D C -- Walker, D A -- Welker, J M -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2005 Oct 28;310(5748):657-60. Epub 2005 Sep 22.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute of Arctic Biology; University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA. terry.chapin@uaf.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16179434" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Alaska
;
Arctic Regions
;
*Greenhouse Effect
;
Picea
;
Seasons
;
Trees
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
