Parts of frigid Antarctica are turning green with plant life at an alarming rate as the region is gripped by extreme heat, new research shows, raising concerns about the changing landscape on this vast continent.
Scientists have used satellite images and data to analyze vegetation levels on the Antarctic Peninsula, a long mountain range pointing north to the tip of South America that is warming much faster than the global average.
They found that plant life – especially mosses – in this harsh environment had increased more than tenfold in the past forty years, according to research by scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire in England, and the British Antarctic Survey, which was published on Friday in 2011. the journal Nature Geoscience.
Vegetation covered less than 0.4 square kilometers of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1986, but had reached almost 5 square kilometers by 2021, the study found. The pace at which the region has greened over the past almost four decades has also increased, by more than 30% between 2016 and 2021.
Although the landscape is still almost entirely snow, ice and rock, this small, green area has grown dramatically since the mid-1980s, says Thomas Roland, a study author and environmental scientist at the University of Exeter.
“Our findings confirm that the influence of anthropogenic climate change knows no bounds in its scope,” Roland told CNN. “Even on the Antarctic Peninsula – this most extreme, remote and isolated ‘wilderness area’ – the landscape is changing, and these effects are visible from space.”
Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, has been hit by extreme heat lately.
This summer, parts of the continent experienced a record-breaking heat wave, with temperatures rising as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal starting in mid-July.
In March 2022, temperatures will rise in some parts of the continent reaches up to 70 degrees above normalthe most extreme temperature anomalies ever recorded in this part of the planet.
As fossil fuel pollution continues to warm the world, Antarctica will continue to warm and this greening will likely only accelerate, scientists predict.
The greener the peninsula becomes, the more soil will form and the more likely the region will become more favorable to invasive species, which may threaten native wildlife.
“Seeds, spores and plant fragments can easily find their way to the Antarctic Peninsula via the boots or equipment of tourists and researchers, or via more ‘traditional’ routes associated with migratory birds and the wind – and so the risk here is clear,” he said.
The greening could also reduce the peninsula’s ability to reflect solar radiation back into space, because dark surfaces absorb more heat.
These effects would likely only be local, but could help further accelerate the growth of plant life as the climate continues to warm, said one of the authors, Olly Bartlett, a senior lecturer in remote sensing and geography at the University of Hertfordshire.
“This iconic landscape could be changed forever,” he said.
Matthew Davey, associate professor of physiological ecology at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, and an expert on the ecology of Arctic plants and microbes, told CNN that the research was “an important advance” in understanding plant life in Antarctica.
There could even be more vegetation than identified, said Davey, who was not involved in the study. The methods the scientists use would mainly detect larger, greener moss fields, he said. “But we know that there are also large areas of lichens, grasses and green and red snow algae that will also contribute to Antarctica’s vegetation cover.”
While the actual increase in plant life is small, he added, the percentage increase is dramatic and “demonstrates the trend of vegetation spreading, albeit slowly, in Antarctica.”
The next phase for the scientists will be to study how plants colonize recently exposed barren land as Antarctica’s glaciers continue to retreat.
CNN meteorologist Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.
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