While a reduction in frozen ocean surface is one of the most widely recognised impacts of Arctic warming, it has also long been anticipated that a warmer Arctic will be a wetter one too, with more intense cycling of water between land, atmosphere and ocean. The shift from a frozen region towards a warmer, wetter Arctic is driven by the capacity of a warmer atmosphere to hold more moisture, by increased rates of evaporation from ice-free oceans, and by the jet stream relaxing.

The Arctic water cycle is expected to shift from a snow-dominated one towards a rain-dominated one during the 21st century, although the timing of this is uncertain. Now, a team of scientists have published a study in the journal Nature Communications which suggests that this shift will occur earlier than previously projected. The effect will be particularly strong in autumn, with most of the Arctic Ocean, Siberia and the Canadian Archipelago becoming rain-dominated by the 2070s instead of the 2090s.

Warmer and wetter isn’t necessarily better

Such a profound change to the Arctic water cycle will inevitably affect ecosystems on land and in the ocean. You might intuitively expect that a warmer and wetter Arctic would be very favourable for ecosystems – rainforests have many more species than tundra, after all. But the plants and animals of the Arctic have evolved for cold conditions over millions of years, and their relatively simple food web is vulnerable to disturbance.

For example, warmer temperatures can cause larval insects to emerge earlier, before the fish species that feed upon them have hatched. More rainfall means more nutrients washed into rivers, which should benefit the microscopic plants at the base of the food chain.

However, this also makes rivers and coastal waters more murky, blocking light needed for photosynthesis and potentially clogging filter-feeding animals, including some whales or sharks. Brackish water typically supports fewer species than either freshwater or seawater, so increasing flows of freshwater offshore may well reduce the range of animals and plants along Arctic coasts.

At the same time, rivers flowing through degrading permafrost will wash organic material into the sea that bacteria can convert to COâ‚‚, making the ocean more acidic. Fresh water also essentially floats on denser seawater.

This causes the ocean to become stratified, impeding exchanges of nutrients and organisms between the deep sea and the surface, and restricting biological activity. Therefore the likely impacts of a warmer, wetter Arctic on food webs, biodiversity and food security are uncertain, but are unlikely to be uniformly positive...

Dr Richard Hodgkins, a Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography in the School of Social Science and Humanities, explains why increased rainfall in the Arctic is bad news for the whole world in The Conversation. 

Read the full article here.