Climate change, making Antarctica greener

If there's a colour associated with Antarctica, it's white. But as temperatures rises with climate change, new research shows it's slowly becoming greener with plant life growing rapidly.


Researchers at the University of Exeter in England looked at changes in the amount of moss that grew along the Antarctic Peninsula to better understand how warming temperatures have impacted the continent's limited plant growth.

They discovered rapidly growing banks of mosses on the ice continent's northern peninsula, which provided striking evidence of climate change in the coldest and most remote parts of the planet.
 
Lead researcher Matt Amesbury said the research focused on moss banks that slowly accumulate by growing a few millimetres each summer along the peninsula.

Few plants live on the continent but scientists studying moss have found a sharp increase in biological activity in the last 50 years.

Scientists used moss bank cores - which are well preserved in Antarctica's cold conditions - from an area spanning about 400 miles (645 km).

They tested five cores from three sites and found major biological changes had occurred over the past 50 years right across the Antarctic Peninsula.

"Temperature increases over roughly the past half century on the Antarctic Peninsula have had a dramatic effect on moss banks growing in the region," said Dr Matt Amesbury.

"If this continues, and with increasing amounts of ice-free land from continued glacier retreat, the Antarctic Peninsula will be a much greener place in the future."

Recent climate change on the Antarctic Peninsula is well documented with warming and other changes such as increased precipitation and wind strength.

Weather records mostly began in the 1950s but biological records preserved in moss bank cores can provide a longer-term context about climate change.

The scientists analysed data for the last 150 years, and found clear evidence of "changepoints" - points in time after which biological activity clearly increased - in the past 50 years.

"The sensitivity of moss growth to past temperature rises suggests that ecosystems will alter rapidly under future warming, leading to major changes in the biology and landscape of this iconic region," said Professor Dan Charman, who led the research project in Exeter.

"In short, we could see Antarctic greening to parallel well-established observations in the Arctic."

The research teams, which included scientists from the University of Cambridge and British Antarctic Survey, say their data indicate that plants and soils will change substantially even with only modest further warming.

The research is published in the journal Current Biology.

 

Rod Minchin  Press Association