Snow-Capped Alps Are Going Green, And You Can See The Consequences From Space

The famous snow-capped peaks of the Alps are fading fast and being replaced by vegetation cover that is expected to accelerate climate change.

The research was based on 38 years of satellite images of the European mountain range.

The first author of the book said that they were surprised to find a huge trend in greening.

Greening is a well-recognized phenomenon in the north, but it hadn't been well established in the mountains.

Researchers suspected similar effects since the poles and mountains are warming more quickly than the rest of the planet.

To exclude areas used for agriculture the team looked at regions at 1,700 meters above sea level. They didn't exclude forested areas and glaciers.

Nearly 10% of the area studied had no snow cover in the summer.

The first effect of warming is to reduce the depth of the snow, which cannot be seen from space.

The researchers compared the amount of vegetation with the amount of chlorophyll present and found that plant growth increased across 77 percent of the zone.

Vicious cycle

There are three different ways in which greening occurs: plants start growing in areas they previously weren't present, they grow taller and more densely, and particular species grow normally at lower altitudes.

Climate change is driving the changes.

"Warming means that we have longer vegetation periods, we have more benign conditions that foster plant growth, so plants can just grow more and faster," she said.

The warmer it gets the more precipitation falls as rain.

There are consequences.

A lot of drinking water comes from the snow. Water disappears quicker if it is not stored as snow.

The habitat species is disrupted.

Tourism is a key economic driver for the region.

When people think about Switzerland, they usually think of the Alps.

The researchers argue that feedback loops are more likely to cause a net result of amplification of warming and thaw of the permafrost.

The cycle of warming, snow melt, and more vegetation is caused by the fact that snow reflects about 90 percent of the sun's radiation.

From green to brown?

It's not possible to predict the future of the Alps.

It's pretty straightforward in the snow. The snow cover is expected to disappear more and more.

Browning, in which the ground is no longer covered with snow or vegetation, has only been detected in a small portion of the area.

In the mountains of Central Asia, this is more than what has been seen in the north.

There was an increase in episodes of extreme rain and a reduction in the amount of water available to plants.

Rumpf hopes to repeat the observations in a few years' time, but he doesn't know if it will happen more and more.

Agence France- Presse.