雪橇狗不是在水上行走,而是像魚一樣前進(jìn)
Each year in June, just before all the sea ice has melted, climate scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute head out by dog sled onto the Greenland sea ice to collect their instruments. Typically the dogs walk on ice, but because of warming temperatures, this year the dogs were splashing in ankle-deep water.
每年6月,就在所有的海冰融化之前,丹麥氣象研究所的氣候科學(xué)家們駕著狗拉的雪橇來到格陵蘭海冰上收集儀器。通常情況下,狗會在冰上行走,但由于氣溫變暖,今年狗狗們在齊踝深的水中戲水。
Photo: Steffen M. Olsen/Twitter
The photo above was taken on June 13 by climatologist Steffen Olsen from the Center for Ocean and Ice at the institute. Olsen's colleague, Rasmus Tonboe, tweeted the image, saying "rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks leaves the melt water on top."
上面這張照片是6月13日由該研究所海洋與冰中心的氣候?qū)W家斯蒂芬·奧爾森拍攝的。奧爾森的同事拉斯穆斯·湯博在推特上發(fā)布了這張照片,稱“冰層迅速融化,滲透性低,裂縫很少,融化的水就在上面。”
Olsen said the ice was about 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) thick. It was taken in the middle of Inglefield Bredning, a fjord in northwestern Greenland. He tweeted that the dogs weren't running on the ice sheet, but on sea ice flooded by surface meltwater.
奧爾森說,冰層大約有1.2米(3.9英尺)厚。照片拍攝于格陵蘭島西北部的英格菲爾德布雷寧峽灣中部。他在推特上說,這些狗不是在冰蓋上奔跑,而是在被表面融水淹沒的海冰上奔跑。
"This year the expedition to retrieve the instruments – by dog-sled, still the most practical way to get around in this region at this time of year – ran into a lot of standing water on the sea ice," Ruth Mottram, climate scientist at the institute, told The Guardian. "The ice here forms pretty reliably every winter and is very thick, which means that there are relatively few fractures for meltwater to drain through. Last week saw the onset of very warm conditions in Greenland and in fact much of the rest of the Arctic, driven by warmer air moving up from the south."
該研究所的氣候科學(xué)家露絲·莫特拉姆告訴《衛(wèi)報》說:“今年,用狗拉雪橇來取回這些儀器的探險隊在海冰上遇到了很多死水。狗拉雪橇仍然是每年這個時候在這一地區(qū)旅行最實用的方式。這里的冰每年冬天都會形成,而且非常厚,這意味著融水相對來說很少有裂縫流出來。上周,格陵蘭島和北極其他大部分地區(qū)開始出現(xiàn)非常溫暖的天氣,這是受南部暖空氣上升的影響。”
Those conditions led to a lot of melting ice, she said. Because the ice is thick in the area and there are no fractures where it can drain, the water pools on the surface. Events like this aren't unusual, but they typically don't occur until later in the summer.
她說,這些條件導(dǎo)致大量的冰融化。因為該地區(qū)的冰很厚,沒有裂縫可以排水,所以水面上形成了水池。像這樣的事件并不罕見,但通常要到夏天晚些時候才會發(fā)生。
Mottram told The Guardian that the temperatures are out of the ordinary but it's too early to say whether global warming has played a part because it's "still a weather-driven extreme event, so it's hard to pin it down to climate change alone."
莫特拉姆在接受《衛(wèi)報》采訪時表示,雖然氣溫異常,但現(xiàn)在就說全球變暖是否起到了一定作用還為時過早,因為它“仍然是一個由天氣驅(qū)動的極端事件,因此很難將其單獨歸咎于氣候變化”。
However, she said: "Our climate model simulations expect there to be a general decline in the length of the sea ice season around Greenland, [but] how fast and how much is very much dependent on how much global temperature rises."
然而,她表示:“我們的氣候模型預(yù)計,格陵蘭島周圍海冰季節(jié)的長度將普遍下降,但下降的速度和幅度在很大程度上取決于全球氣溫上升的幅度。”