Ancient ponds in the Arctic tundra in northern Canada are drying up and some will disappear in less than a quarter-century due to global warming, Canadian researchers report in a new study.
"Using these data, we show that some high Arctic pond ecosystems, which represent the most common aquatic habitat in many polar regions, have desiccated as a consequence of climate change," says the study, published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Biologist and Arctic climate experts John Smol of Queen's University in Ontario, and Marianne Douglas of the University of Alberta, compiled data on the Artic ponds on the eastern edge of Ellesmere Island near the 80th parallel from the early 1980s through last year.
"These data represent the longest record of systematic limnological monitoring from the high Arctic," they write.
They discovered in recent years that the ponds, the water level of which is a useful indicator of what is happening with the climate, were suddenly drying up weeks or even months earlier than usual in the summer, when the tundra ice thaws.
Several of the key study ponds dried up last year by early July, they report, and others had much reduced water levels.
"I remember getting off the helicopter and looking out and wondering: "What the hell is going on here?" Smol told the Globe and Mail newspaper.
The Beach Ridge pond, the surface of which would become as large as a football pitch during the summer melt in the 1980s, was completely dry in July 2006, Smol and Douglas report.
"Had these ponds dried up in late August or early September (i.e. by the end of the typical ice-free season), this would in itself be an important ecological threshold.
"However, what is striking about these observations is that some of the ponds dried up at such an early point in the summer," some even in early June, they said.
The report comes as scientists have recorded a significant rise in temperatures in the Arctic, causing an apparent acceleration of glacial melting in the region.
