Large areas of open ocean are driving heavy snowfall in the Arctic, which protects trees from harsh northern conditions.
White spruce trees dot the tundra in the Brooks Range. These trees are better able to survive harsh conditions due to heavy winter snowfall, a result of Arctic sea ice loss.
“You basically have this blanket of snow that covers up small seedlings and saplings, and protects them,” he said.“In the winter in the Arctic, the wind picks up all of these spiky snow crystals, and basically batters trees and other vegetation that stick up above the snow,” Sullivan said. “And so the deeper the snow, more of the population gets protected.”
A white spruce tree core from the Brooks Range shows increasingly wider rings, indicating accelerated growth. Scientists correlated the rings with growing areas of open water due to sea ice loss.
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