Global Warming Accelerates Multi-System Change in Arctic River Chemistry | Battalion

Note: Environmental research by the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory, led by MBL Senior Scientist Jim McClelland, is this article's focus.

Somewhere along the northern coast of Siberia coast in the mid-1990s, Russian researchers and their international colleagues cruised through vast estuaries — where fresh and saltwater mix — on a giant icebreaker ship. Pausing along the Yenisei and Ob’ Rivers, they slipped tea-like water into test tubes — the first steps in a decades-long research project to study how Arctic river systems are changing over time.

NASA estimates this is the planet’s warmest record in 10 years, accelerated by anthropogenic sources such as the release of key greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution. A spike in temperature this drastic has led to a myriad of consequences, including extreme weather events, widespread ecological damage and declining biodiversity.

But what is most worrying to scientists? Arctic permafrost. Read the rest of the story here.

Source: Global Warming Accelerates Multi-System Change in Arctic River Chemistry | Battalion