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Biogeochemistry

Arctic rivers tell tales of change

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 760–761 (2023)Cite this article

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Two decades of measurements across large Arctic rivers reveal unexpectedly divergent biogeochemical changes that have important implications for the Arctic Ocean. This calls for an improved understanding of current disruptions over the boundless Arctic landscape.

The Arctic region is currently being severely hit by climate change, enduring thawing of frozen soils, greening landscapes, collapsing coasts and vanishing sea ice. River waters carry signals arising from Arctic landscape changes in their journey from soils to the ocean. These signals can help predict impacts in the Arctic Ocean, as well as provide vital information to better understand upstream changes happening in terrestrial and riverine systems, where measurements are both difficult and sparse. Arctic warming has been thought to substantially enhance the riverine transport of ocean-bound matters. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Tank and colleagues1 paint a strongly different picture based on two decades of river measurements across the Arctic: global warming can cause opposing trends of biogeochemical changes in rivers depending on the transported matter investigated. These changes have more complex explanations and impacts than previously thought.

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Fig. 1: Drivers and impacts of changes occurring across Arctic landscape, rivers and ocean under a changing climate.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Fabrice Lacroix

  2. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Fabrice Lacroix

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  1. Fabrice Lacroix
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Correspondence to Fabrice Lacroix.

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Lacroix, F. Arctic rivers tell tales of change. Nat. Geosci. 16, 760–761 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01248-6

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