Thread: High latitude forest might return

A few million years ago we had very high latitude forest. Some suggest they might return. Rather amazing large plants could thrive above the arctic circle once again. Nunavut's mysterious ancient life could return by 2100 as Arctic warms

That's all very well. But there's an awful lot of "drunken forests" that will have to clear the way as the permafrost thaws.

The larger forest trees might return in a few centuries, but the methane released from thawed soils and bogs will create their own kind of havoc in the interim.

I had originally posted this in the thread power for the people:
Power for the People

Look into the work done at Lake El’gygytgyn,(3 million years of arctic climate) their data are suggesting much warmer arctic during mis(marine isotobe stages) 11, 31, 49,55,77,87,91, and 93 and ...forested arctic ocean shores
here's the link:
Julie Brigham-Grette presents Lake El' gygytgyn Research - YouTube
Julie Brigham-Grette, super interglacials
"the tree line is marching north (now)", "8 degrees C warmer arctic (mis 11)
see, especially(mis 11)" and (mis 31)

in light of their studies
"6 degrees warmer" may need to be revised upwards

in light of their studies
"6 degrees warmer" may need to be revised upwards

Well, that's really cheery. What edibles will grow in that world?

in the arctic:
Asparagus (perennial)
• Asparagus pea
• Beets (warm and cool seasons)
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Cabbage
• Carrots (warm and cool seasons)
• Cauliflower
• Celeriac
• Celery
• Chinese greens
• Fava beans
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Onion

No.

In a 6+C warmer world, what agricultural crops would grow.

A-Z list of warm climate and tropical vegetables from : Growing Vegetables (And How To Grow Vegetables in Hot Weather)
•Amaranth (use leaf amaranth like spinach)
•Arugula (rocket)
•Asian Greens
•Beans (try snake beans and winged beans in the tropics)
•Bell Peppers
•Cabbage
•Capsicum (that's the Australian name for peppers)
•Cassava (starchy tubers)
•Ceylon Spinach
•Chard (silverbeet, similar to spinach)
•Chinese Cabbages
•Chilli Peppers
•Cucumbers
•Eggplant (aubergine)
•Endive
•Kang Kong (water spinach)
•Lettuce
•Luffa (angled luffa is a great zucchini substitute)
•Okra
•Peppers
•Pumpkins
•Radish
•Rocket (arugula)
•Silverbeet (chard, similar to spinach)
•Squash
•Sweet Corn
•Sweet Potatoes (instead of normal potatoes)
•Tomatoes
•Water Chestnuts
•Zucchini

during this hot dry summer
we had the biggest plum harvest since I've been here(20+ years) also peaches, apples, apricots did very well

dread naught
I might add that those numbers were derived from paleo-climate arctic temperatures
extrapolation to mid latitudes seems problematic
that being said:
(wild guess du jour)
what grows well in Georgia or Mississipi would then grow well in Iowa, and what grows well in Iowa would then grow well in Alberta, Alaska or Quebec, and what grows well there now would then do well above the arctic circle
...........
............
You've read about harvesting ancient logs from rivers, swamps, lakes and bogs?
What treasures will be revealed when the permafrost melts and all the ancient(gis 11 and 31)bogs river deltas, and etc are open?

You have a fair number of repeats on the list there, for example: green peppers, Capsicum (the Genus name), Chilli peppers, & peppers. So the list when trimmed is much less....

Originally Posted by Paleoichneum

You have a fair number of repeats on the list there, for example: green peppers, Capsicum (the Genus name), Chilli peppers, & peppers. So the list when trimmed is much less....

True, and
it's just a partial list borrowed from the linked article
Much as the greenlanders from 5 centuries ago discovered, you won't be able to just plant what grand daddy planted and not think about it
But we are an intelligent species? And with a little effort we'll be able to adapt?
Or, we could just choose extinction?

And only one grain. I guess among other things we'll have to do beside finding homes for hundred of millions of people from low lying countries, uprooting our cities to higher ground, completely rebuilding our irrigation and flood control systems, and going without seafood, we'll just add building up billions of tons of soil to Northern latitudes to the list--well that and building Emperor Mings weather machine so high latitude seasons because more regular than at present.

high latitude seasons because more regular than at present.

High latitude to me means not-much-of-a-growing-season-at-all. Regardless of how much snow and ice (let alone soil) is there at the moment, how many places in Alaska or Finland or Siberia have seasonal sunlight enough to support an agricultural sized crop of any kind. I can understand that a few not-so-small landholdings could very expensively reproduce suitable growing conditions for a few fruits, nuts and vines, maybe potatoes, but I don't see where we'd get replacements for broadacre crops or extensive orchard production.

High latitude means eating animals and not much else as far as I can see. I certainly don't see where you'd get the conditions for long season annual crops like Brussels Sprouts or day length dependent crops like onions.

Sunlight isn't necessarily a problem..there's actually more at high latitudes during the summer than anywhere else--this is why so many record breaking sized vegitables come from Alaska for example. Soil is thin though--something we really don't know how to create in anywhere near the regional scales we'd need to grow grains. And even if warm, growing seasons short--something perhaps GMO crops could solve. Another concern, that I don't think we could change, is high latitudes have notoriiously variable weather from month to month and year to year--a good example is the huge variability in Russia's high latitude wheat harvest--some years bumper other years complete bust with not many between those extremes.

high latitudes have notoriiously variable weather from month to month and year to year

Seeing as one of the main predictions of a warming climate is more variability in seasons everywhere, that's not very encouraging.

As the arctic warms, and the ice melts and stays melted, and the west antarctic ice shelf and some of the greenland and east antarctic ice sheets melt and add to the oceans, and the bering opens up allowing more of a flow through for pacific to atlantic transportation of waters, then the arctic will become a maritime climate(perhaps why Julie's noting that there was more moisture, [12"?] Maritime and wet climates are much more stable. True?

How deep is the permafrost? Is it not composed of soils?

I can't remember Hansen's estimate of increased insolation, nor how much of that is from feedback or CO2, but Julie gave a number which may come in handy for a "natural" baseline presented by the lake E team.

You may have noticed that the cores were collected in 2009, and results published this past summer(2012)-----
you took my links?
you watched the video with julie brigham-grette?
You understand how much of a paradigm changer this new data is? I'm gonna guess that they wanted to look at the data and look again, and look again before they published. You noticed the defensiveness when she stated that "this isn't just a backwater lake in the middle of no-where"?

If they don't know what is the causal factor for the super-interglacials(and no computer model they tried could fit the data), and it happened repeatedly in the past, we should prepare our minds to the concept that it will happen again.
Maybe during this interglacial.
Maybe not.
Our more primitive ancestors survived these climate changes many times in the past. Are we a lesser species?
Is this the edge of extinction? Is the limit of our abilities just wanting it the way it was?

We simply do not know what will grow best where if/when the climate warms (another 6-8-...? degrees). This is something that will have to be tested and experimented with as the climate change unfolds.

I have been expecting something like the Lake E. data for a very long time. From my studies, it just seemed obvious. But as professor Brigham-Grette said:
I/we never expected this much change/ these high temperatures.

Bless them, they did all this research for us on a budget that was less than the cost of a fighter aircraft.

Maritime and wet climates are much more stable. True?

Yes. But the lead thread story was about a Boreal forest near the Arctic ocean--not many foods come from Boreal forest--unless your a caribou or an elk. Even a more Northern favorable climate will be a long was from that Arctic ocean and not moderated by much. The reason for variability has to do with higher Coriolis force and shorter Rossby waves leading to tighter temperature gradients (Arctic fronts etc).

It's a good study. I'm not sure they have the temporal resolution to estimate the rapidity of the warming during those events--we really need to get a handle on that. They did nicely demonstrate the root cause which was astronomical forcing, but like always the surprise is the degree of amplification from CO2 and albedo changes. It's actually quite a bad news story, because the work is showing we're probably underestimating the sensitivity of the system.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

It's actually quite a bad news story, because the work is showing we're probably underestimating the sensitivity of the system.

Huh?
bad ... news story?
or
bad news ... story?

I don't understand

lol....ya I messed that up.

The quality of the research appears fine...what it tells us is bad news for our near term futures.

you see
that is where we differ
I don't ask much of god or the earth/biom, and think neither is bad news.
Science is an extension of my senses and lets me know what lies beyond my sight or today.

It is just information which we may act upon with our own free will.

I've described my actions at the various universities as finding a likely professor, knocking him/her down, pulling out my knowledge sucking straw and sucking all i could from them, inhaling the essense of their years of study, then wandering off seeking my next victim.

Sometime in the late 90s, i started arguing with what I considered the sloppy short sighted "science" of what i perceived as "global warming alarmists" ...(ever read Jacques Laskar?)
One of my ploys was : "gaia bred us to be the lords of fire so that we could fight the next advance of the ice"
silly? ok (We did make major leaps like using fire about the time of the start of the northern glaciation)
but arguing against them forced me into the arguementative position of favoring global warming---
And, I really do not remember exactly what my pre arguementative position actually was.

It had something to do with comparing current climate change data with the previous discernable patterns ...
and changed

Originally Posted by sculptor

you see
that is where we differ
I don't ask much of god or the earth/biom, and think neither is bad news.
Science is an extension of my senses and lets me know what lies beyond my sight or today.

It is just information which we may act upon with our own free will.

I've described my actions at the various universities as finding a likely professor, knocking him/her down, pulling out my knowledge sucking straw and sucking all i could from them, inhaling the essense of their years of study, then wandering off seeking my next victim.

Im curious, are you purposely ignorant of what will happen with full scale global warming, or are you just clueless?

Paleo
when current "scientific" fads fly in the face of accumulated knowledge
which would you choose?

Why, exactly, do you think I study paleoclimatology?
Why do I consider Julia Brigham-Grette so damned beautiful? (the 50 ft.tall woman)
Why do I consider her and the lake E. team the giants upon whose shoulders I may stand to see farther?

Take the link
see for yourself
stand upon the shoulders of giants

Why her though? When other teams have been producing high quality work that shows serious consequences coming?

Originally Posted by Paleoichneum

Why her though? When other teams have been producing high quality work that shows serious consequences coming?

really?
wonderful
name a few-Please: Name them all
gimme the links
.......
I had thought Lake E a very special place--- a bowl shaped trap in the arctic on a continantal devide and therefore non qlaciated, saving millions of layers of undisturbed stratigraphy of the history of it's environs.

Where else can we find comparable data?

as/re serious consequences
forested shores of the arctic ocean?

A pet theory of mine is that mammoths treated trees as African elephants do: they actively destroyed them, to maintain grassland habitat. In this narrative, predation by humans could have allowed the runaway growth of forests (and loss of albedo!) we see corresponding with those animal's extinction.

So although Nunavut is mostly outside the traditional range of mammoths, I suggest we introduce them to keep the region in check.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

...It's a good study. I'm not sure they have the temporal resolution to estimate the rapidity of the warming during those events--we really need to get a handle on that. .... we're probably underestimating the sensitivity of the system .

Long ago when I was at university---it was taught that it probably took thousands of years to exit a period of glaciation. Now, the onset of the warmth is indicated to have been rather rapid(maybe even decades)---studies in norway, wisconsin, barbados, etc... (see the brigham-young unuversity's website---they say, roughly, "while the onset of ice ages and glaciation within those ice ages seems to have been gradual, exiting them has been rather rapid".

I sincerely hope that those proposing to study the accurate speed of these changes are well funded.(I don't want it now damnit, I want it yesterday)

as/re "we're probably underestimating the sensitivity of the system",
There is an old joke about Tonto and the Lone Ranger... They are trapped in a box canyon by hundreds of angry indians, and running out of bullets. The Lone Ranger opens the chamber of his pistol and seeing only one silver bullet left, turns to his old friend and says "It looks like we're done for Tonto" to which Tonto responds "What do you mean we white boy?"

(that don't mean I estimated right---it means i ain't quite bold enough to have estimated, nore found/read anything convincing enough to sway me) ( i am leaning toward rapid change/warming as a pre industrial norm--but--accurate global wide baselines seem elusive as does defining "rapid")

.....................
epimetheus:
If the Lake E team couldn't find a single climate modeling package that included/ accounted for/ their field data, then maybe those models need to be revisited before we draw conclusions from them?


.............
ping
.............
and from : M. Elrick et al.:

If our interpretation that Lower–Middle Devonian 3rd-order
depositional sequences were controlled by My-scale glacio- and
thermo-eustasy is correct, then it implies that a My-scale climate
driver operated in the Devonian. Laskar et al. (1993; Laskar, 1999;
Laskar et al., 2004) calculated the changes in the Earth's orbital
parameters over the last 20 My and determined the long-period
modulations of climatic precession, obliquity, and eccentricity. Of
these, the long periods of obliquity (~1.2 My) and eccentricity
(~2.4 My) have a high potential for affecting climate because at
these times, low precession and eccentricity insolation variations
occur. In particular, the ~1.2 My and ~2.4 My cycles have been
recognized in oxygen and carbon isotope, magnetic susceptibility, and
foraminiferal records of Paleogene to Neogene deep-marine sediments
(Lourens and Hilgen,1997; Shackleton et al.,1999; Zachos et al.,
2001; Wade and Pälike, 2004; Coxall et al., 2005). Herbert (1997,
1999) reports ~2.4 My cycles in Upper Cretaceous deep-marine
deposits and attributes them to climate change driven by long-period
eccentricity. Most recently ...

from http://epswww.unm.edu/facstaff/dolomite/pdf/2.pdf

1.2my
coincidental with mis 31?