It would seem that over the last 20 years that the arctic climate is indeed changing. The trend seems to be warmer summers, higher humidity and less intense cold in the winter. 20 years of warming has caused all the glaciers to receed. When flying over the mountainous regions of Baffin Island's east coast, one can see the dramatic glacial meltdown. All glaciers have moved back up into the higher altitudes where the summer heat remains below freezing.
Insects that have never been seen on Baffin Island are now becoming commonplace. Many believe that the insect's range has increased due to the warming trend. I on the other hand attribute the increase of non-native insects to an increase in the number of cargo ships comming to the territory. Every crate dropped onto the beach has insects inside from far away places. I had opened a crate and found several paper wasps. The wasps quickly dispursed out into the tundra. Now what is a paper wasp going to do 500 miles north of the tree line? Paper wasps need trees to make the paper that they build thier nests out of. Those insects are in for a surprise I thought. I was in for more of a surprise when 2 years later, I had found a wasp nest. A paper wasp nest. How did this small collony survive the brutal arctic winter? How did these insects build a paper nest in a treeless wasteland? I found the answer by looking around. The treeless tundra is not actually treeless. Several species of "tree" grow on the barrens. These trees grow slowly and creep along the ground growing upwards no higher than a few inches. Many "trees" grow such that they engulf rocks. They look as though they are grasping the rock like a wooden hand with twig fingers hanging onto a stone. These little dwarf trees take decades to grow but are easily unnoticed as thier size is never quite like thier southern cousins. It is the little trees that had provided the raw materials for the hardy wasps to build thier nest. I had observed a lone wasp chewing a trail along a twig of a rock grasping tree. I do not think that these insects will persist. I think that I had found a lone example of ferral wasps. The location was protected from the harsh wind and was somewhat artificially heated being near a building exhaust air duct.
Global warming has only been studied for a short time. We really do not know with any great accuracy, the natural fluctuations in average temperature of this planet Earth. We have not been around long enough to gather the data over the eons. The effects of "greenhouse gases" cannot be ignored but perhaps we overestimate the effect. This summer has been the coolest summer in decades here in this part of Nunavut. The hottest day this year so far has been a high of 18C. Last year we had several days of 25C to 28C highs. A sweltering temperature for people who spend most of thier year in freezing temperatures. Global warming is not as evident in the arctic this year. Maybe we are on the road back to cooler temperatures. Maybe a warming trend happens every thousand years or so. Maybe we are actually on the road to a new ice age. Ice age?
Well, I already live in an ice age. Sort of. With paper wasps.
1 comment:
i find your blog very interesting as i just moved to colorado from florida, and as such, the higher peaks of colorado are somewhat of a novelty.
i could be wrong(having lived in florida all my life, i'm not an expert at cold weather climates!) but i think the alpine tundra is probably somewhat similiar to the arctic tundra of nunavat as you describe it. whenever i go to mt evans(which is 14000 ft.- 4250 meters?), after around 11000ft, you start to see trees similiar to the ones you describe- wierd trees that look like they are poessessed or evil the way their branches are all twisted.
as for global warming, i'm not sure either. the earth goes through long cycles and short cycles and perhaps the earth would have warmed up even without industrialization. in earth's history there have been periods with large scale volcanic eruptions and i'm sure the average volcano puts out more greenhouse gases than a billion cars could ever do.
people forget that there have been long cold spells in (relative) recent history- when i lived in miami in 1977, it had its first ever recorded snowfall. i can't remember what decade it was in the 19th century, but i remember reading that people were wondering what was happening with it being so cold. one year the high temperature in savanah, georgia on july 4th was 40 degrees f!!!
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