Global Warming: Effects on the Tundra

What is tundra?

World’s coldest and driest biomes

• Located at latitudes 55° to 70° North( circumnavigating the North pole)
• 3 types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine tundra, and Antarctic tundra
• vast and treeless land which covers about 20% of the Earth’s surface
• cold, and the land is pretty stark
• low growing plants like mosses, heaths, and lichen
• covered with marshes, lakes, bogs and streams(When melt)
• insects and many migrating birds
• main seasons are winter and summer
• winds can blow between 30 to 60 miles per hour

Direct changes on tundra because of global warming

• Winter temperatures have increased
• Snow and sea ice coverage have shrunk
• unprecedented mass-melting
• glaciers are in retreat throughout the Arctic

Deeper influence according to these changes

• The permafrost is starting to melt
• pent-up carbon is already leaking into the air in the form of  CO2 and CH4 powerful greenhouse  gases
• They release CO2 and CH4 into the air as by products, gases that warm the planet by trapping heat energy from the sun
• allow plants to grow vigorously
• suck up huge amounts of carbon out from the atmosphere through photosynthesis(perhaps even enough to cancel out greenhouse gas emissions from the soil)
• Arctic soils harbour two to three times more carbon than is currently aloft in Earth’s atmosphere