© Lars Holst HansenThe Zackenberg valley in Northeast Greenland, summer 2018. Huge amounts of snow still covered the ground in late June, where the snow-covered season usually is coming to an end.
"2018 may offer a peep into the future, where increased climatic variability may push the arctic species to — and potentially beyond — their limits."
A new study published Tuesday looked at the implications of extreme snowfall in the Arctic in 2018 — the kind of increased precipitation event scientists link to climate change — and researchers say the scenario could be a harbinger of how ecosystems in the region will be negatively affected by a rapidly warming planet.
"The result was an almost complete reproductive failure of plants and animals of all sizes," the authors wrote.
The takeaway for arctic ecosystems, the authors found, is that "changes in precipitation may prove as crucial as changes in temperature — if not even more."
For the study, published in the journal PLOS Biology, researchers focused on the monitoring site of Zackenberg in Northeast Greenland. In 2018, the Arctic — including the High Arctic where the Zackenberg facility is — saw unusually large amounts of snow. That meant there was a significant delay in snow melt, which in turn made it difficult for plants to grow and for animals to access resources.
The result? The "most complete reproductive failure encountered in the terrestrial ecosystem during more than two decades of monitoring," said the study.
Comment: Elsewhere in the Arctic a wildflower meadow photographed in Arctic oases surprises scientists.