NASA Studies Details of a Greening Arctic

[OKIsItJustMe]

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http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-studies-details-of-a-greening-arctic

[font face=Serif]June 2, 2016

[font size=5]NASA Studies Details of a Greening Arctic[/font]

[font size=3]The northern reaches of North America are getting greener, according to a NASA study that provides the most detailed look yet at plant life across Alaska and Canada. In a changing climate, almost a third of the land cover – much of it Arctic tundra – is looking more like landscapes found in warmer ecosystems.

With 87,000 images taken from Landsat satellites, converted into data that reflects the amount of healthy vegetation on the ground, the researchers found that western Alaska, Quebec and other regions became greener between 1984 and 2012. The new Landsat study further supports previous work that has shown changing vegetation in Arctic and boreal North America.

Landsat is a joint NASA/U.S. Geological Survey program that provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land vegetation in existence.

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NASA scientists used almost 30 years of data from Landsat satellites to track changes in vegetation in Alaska and Canada. Of the more than 4 million square miles, 30 percent had increases in vegetation (greening) while only 3 percent had decreases (browning). This is the first study to produce a continent-scale map while still providing detailed information at the human scale.
Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Matthew Radcliff
Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio[/font]

“It shows the climate impact on vegetation in the high latitudes,” said Jeffrey Masek, a researcher who worked on the study and the Landsat 9 project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Temperatures are warming faster in the Arctic than elsewhere, which has led to longer seasons for plants to grow in and changes to the soils. Scientists have observed grassy tundras changing to shrublands, and shrubs growing bigger and denser – changes that could have impacts on regional water, energy and carbon cycles.

With Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 data, Masek and his colleague Junchang Ju, a remote sensing scientist at Goddard, found that there was extensive greening in the tundra of western Alaska, the northern coast of Canada, and the tundra of Quebec and Labrador. While northern forests greened in Canada, they tended to decline in Alaska. Overall, the scientists found that 29.4 percent of the region greened up, especially in shrublands and sparsely vegetated areas, while 2.9 percent showed vegetation decline.

“The greening trend was unmistakable,” the researchers wrote in an April 2016 paper in Remote Sensing of Environment.

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[tonyt53]

1. Well it is at the top of the planet and everybody knows hot air rises. Couldn't resist.

The situation in the Arctic, Greenland, and Iceland is getting worse every day. Deniers will never talk about those places, but always move the the Antarctic, where things are not looking so good when comparing the eastern part with the western part.