Search results for "GREENLAND"
showing 10 items of 26 documents
Long-term dynamics in microbial eukaryotes communities: a palaeolimnological view based on sedimentary DNA
2016
International audience; Assessing the extent to which changes in lacustrine biodiversity are affected by anthropogenic or climatic forces requires extensive palaeolimnological data. We used high-throughput sequencing to generate time-series data encompassing over 2200 years of microbial eukaryotes (protists and Fungi) diversity changes from the sedimentary DNA record of two lakes (Lake Bourget in French Alps and Lake Igaliku in Greenland). From 176 samples, we sequenced a large diversity of microbial eukaryotes, with a total 16 386 operational taxonomic units distributed within 50 phylogenetic groups. Thus, microbial groups, such as Chlorophyta, Dinophyceae, Haptophyceae and Ciliophora, tha…
Interannual variability of Greenland winter precipitation sources: 2. Effects of North Atlantic Oscillation variability on stable isotopes in precipi…
2008
[1] A new Lagrangian moisture source diagnostic is applied to identify the atmospheric conditions relevant for the fractionation of stable water isotopes during evaporation over the ocean and subsequent transport to Greenland. Northern Hemisphere winter months with positive and negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index are studied on the basis of ERA-40 reanalysis data. Diagnosed moisture transport conditions are supplied to a Rayleigh-type isotope fractionation model to derive estimates for the isotopic composition of stable isotopes in winter precipitation on the Greenland plateau for the two NAO phases. Because of changes in atmospheric circulation, moisture source locations for pr…
Interannual variability of Greenland winter precipitation sources: Lagrangian moisture diagnostic and North Atlantic Oscillation influence
2008
[1] We present a new Lagrangian diagnostic for identifying the sources of water vapor for precipitation. Unlike previous studies, the method allows for a quantitative demarcation of evaporative moisture sources. This is achieved by taking into account the temporal sequence of evaporation into and precipitation from an air parcel during transport, as well as information on its proximity to the boundary layer. The moisture source region diagnostic was applied to trace the origin of water vapor for winter precipitation over the Greenland ice sheet for 30 selected months with pronounced positive, negative, and neutral North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, using the European Centre for Medium-…
Reimagining cultural memory of the arctic in the graphic narratives of Oqaluttuaq
2021
The Greenlandic oral story-telling tradition, Oqaluttuaq, meaning “history,” “legend,” and “narrative,” is recognized as an important entry point into Arctic collective memory. The graphic artist Nuka K. Godtfredsen and his literary and scientific collaborators have used the term as the title of graphic narratives published from 2009 to 2018, and focused on four moments or ‘snippets’ from Greenland’s history (from the periods of Saqqaq, late Dorset, Norse settlement, and European colonization). Adopting a fragmentary and episodic approach to historical narrativization, the texts frame the modern European presence in Greenland as one of multiple migrations to and settlements in the Artic, ra…
Vulnerability of the North Water ecosystem to climate change
2021
High Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous livelihoods are tightly linked and exposed to climate change, yet assessing their sensitivity requires a long-term perspective. Here, we assess the vulnerability of the North Water polynya, a unique seaice ecosystem that sustains the world’s northernmost Inuit communities and several keystone Arctic species. We reconstruct mid-to-late Holocene changes in sea ice, marine primary production, and little auk colony dynamics through multi-proxy analysis of marine and lake sediment cores. Our results suggest a productive ecosystem by 4400–4200 cal yrs b2k coincident with the arrival of the first humans in Greenland. Climate forcing during the late Holocene, l…
Island Geographies of Separation and Cohesion: The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Geopolitics of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland).
2020
Abstract Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) is an Arctic highly autonomous subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ) of Denmark, its former coloniser. The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic of 2020 has influenced both Kalaallit Nunaat’s relations with the outside world and relations between people and places within the territory. The Kalaallit Nunaat government’s response to the pandemic, including both internal and external travel bans and restrictions on movement, has focused on eradicating the disease from the territory. This strategy, however, is challenged both by the SNIJ’s economic reliance on Denmark and by the Danish government’s own strategy of mitigating the disease. This paper explores the …
Response of an arctic predator guild to collapsing lemming cycles
2012
6 pages; International audience; Alpine and arctic lemming populations appear to be highly sensitive to climate change, and when faced with warmer and shorter winters, their well-known high-amplitude population cycles may collapse. Being keystone species in tundra ecosystems, changed lemming dynamics may convey significant knock-on effects on trophically linked species. Here, we analyse long-term (1988-2010), community-wide monitoring data from two sites in high-arctic Greenland and document how a collapse in collared lemming cyclicity affects the population dynamics of the predator guild. Dramatic changes were observed in two highly specialized lemming predators: snowy owl and stoat. Follo…
Cross-icecap spring migration confirmed in a high-Arctic seabird, the Ivory Gull Pagophila eburnea
2021
Seabirds rarely cross major terrestrial barriers during seasonal migration, possibly because they have a limited ability to build up fat stores. For the first time, we tracked two Ivory Gulls with GPS loggers during spring migration from the wintering area in Davis Strait to the breeding colony in north-east Greenland. While one bird migrated in March around the southern tip of Greenland, the other delayed migration until May and crossed the Greenland icecap north of 70°N, covering 1345 km in 29 h. Several aspects of the crossing were noteworthy: the track was remarkably direct, the bird made several stops (totalling 6 h) on the icecap, and the bird increased its flying altitude to nearly 3…
A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception
2005
How do ice ages begin? It's an obvious question to ask as we enjoy the relative luxury of an interglacial, but a hard one to answer. A look at past transitions may give some clues as to how this period will one day come to an end. A climate reconstruction based on sediments found beneath a lake in the Eifel mountains in Germany provides evidence of an extreme climate event lasting 468 years right at the end of the last interglacial. Dust storms, aridity, bushfires and the loss of trees associated with a warm climate coincided with a southward shift of the warm waters of the North Atlantic drift. In terms of insolation — the rate of delivery of the Sun's radiation to Earth — conditions then …
Climate change and cyclic predator-prey population dynamics in the high Arctic.
2009
The high Arctic has the world's simplest terrestrial vertebrate predator–prey community, with the collared lemming being the single main prey of four predators, the snowy owl, the Arctic fox, the long-tailed skua, and the stoat. Using a 20-year-long time series of population densities for the five species and a dynamic model that has been previously parameterized for northeast Greenland, we analyzed the population and community level consequences of the ongoing and predicted climate change. Species' responses to climate change are complex, because in addition to the direct effects of climate change, which vary depending on species' life histories, species are also affected indirectly due to…