An ecosystem-wide reproductive failure with more snow in the Arctic

Niels Martin Schmidt; Jeroen Reneerkens; Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen; Martin Olesen; Tomas Roslin

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000392

An ecosystem-wide reproductive failure with more snow in the Arctic

PLoS Biol. 2019 Oct 15;17(10):e3000392. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000392. eCollection 2019 Oct.

Authors

Niels Martin Schmidt^{1

2}, Jeroen Reneerkens^{3

4}, Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen^{5

6

7}, Martin Olesen⁶, Tomas Roslin^{8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark.
² Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
³ Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
⁴ NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Department of Coastal Systems and Utrecht University, Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands.
⁵ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁶ Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁷ NORCE climate, Bergen, Norway.
⁸ Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.
⁹ Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract

2018: Arctic researchers have just witnessed another extreme summer-but in a new sense of the word. Although public interest has long been focused on general warming trends and trends towards a lower sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, this summer saw the realization of another predicted trend: that of increasing precipitation during the winter months and of increased year-to-year variability. In a well-studied ecosystem in Northeast Greenland, this resulted in the most complete reproductive failure encountered in the terrestrial ecosystem during more than two decades of monitoring: only a few animals and plants were able to reproduce because of abundant and late melting snow. These observations, we suggest, should open our eyes to potentially drastic consequences of predicted changes in both the mean and the variability of arctic climate.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Arctic Regions
Birds / physiology*
Climate Change*
Ecosystem
Genetic Fitness*
Mammals / physiology*
Plant Dormancy*
Plants
Rain
Seasons

Grants and funding

The Danish Environmental Protection Agency and the Danish Energy Agency are thanked for their financial support over the years. JR was supported by an International Polar Year grant and a Netherlands Polar Programme grant (NWO grants 851.30.008 and 866.15.207) and INTERACT grants for Transnational Access from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No 262693. JHC and MOL received funding from the European Research Council under the EU FP7 / ERC grant agreement 610055 as part of the ice2ice project. TR was funded by the Academy of Finland (grants 276909 and 285803). 'The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.