"Unprecedented" Warm Temperatures on Northwest Arctic Island Cause Land Sliding

A Queen's University-led climate change research team has monitored such extremely warm temperatures in the High Arctic this summer that they are calling it "unprecedented" and have begun revising their forecasts.

Dr. Scott Lamoureux's new four-year project, which is located on remote Melville Island in the northwest Arctic near Canada, brings together scientists and educators from three Canadian universities and the territory of Nunavut. They are studying climate change preciptated variation in the amount of water in watersheds and how that variation affects water quality and the ecosystem sustainability related to plants and animals that depend on the watersheds.

Professor of geography Dr. Scott Lamoureux, who is the leader of a new International Polar Year project that was announced yesterday by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strah in Nunavut, reports: "Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed [on Melville Island]...It's something we'd envisioned for the future - but to see it happening now is quite remarkable."

Water from melting permafrost a meter below ground lubricated the topsoil, causing it to slide down slopes as the team watched in amazement from their camp on Melville Island in July. The sliding topsoil cleared everything in its path and thrust up ridges at the valley bottom "that piled up like a rug," said Lamoureux, who is the leader of the Queen's-led research project and an expert in hydro-climatic variability and landscape processes. "The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes."

After comparing this summer's observations to aerial photos dating back to the 1950s and to the past five years of monitoring records, the research leader calls the present conditions "unprecedented" in scope and activity. The research information will be key to improving models for predicting future climate change and its affects in the High Arctic. Accurate models are critical to the everyday living conditions of people making their homes there. Knowing the affects of climate change is of particular concern in relation to lakes and rivers where people and animals obtain their drinking water.

"A considerable amount of vegetation has been disturbed and we observed a sharp rise in erosion and a change in sediment load in the river," Lamoureux said. "This kind of disturbance also has important consequences for existing and future infrastructure in the region, like roads, pipelines and air strips." Lamoureux also said that these events would be on the level of "catastrophic" in terms of land use and resources if these unprecedented affects of climate change were to occur in more inhabited parts of Canada.

Other members of the research team from the Queen's Geography Department include : Paul Treitz, Melissa Lafreniere and Neal Scott; Myrna Simpson and Andre Simpson from U of T; and Pierre Francus from INRS-ETE, Quebec. Linda Lamoureux of Kingston's Martello School will work with the scientists to develop learning tools for schools in the north.

The Queen's-led project is working with other IPY research groups including: Arctic HYDRA, an international group investigating the impact of climate change on water in the Arctic; Science Pub, a Norwegian group working on broad research from science to public education about the impacts of global warming; and CiCAT, a University of British Columbia-led group of 48 researchers investigating the impacts of climate change on tundra vegetation.

"Arctic heat wave stuns climate change researchers," Queen's University.