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One of the dramatic effects of global warming is the retreat of glaciers. This phenomenon has intensified in the last two decades. Postglacial areas are quickly colonised by various groups of organisms. Auto- and heterotrophic microorganisms play an especially vital role in these processes. They thrive in shallow glacial lagoons which often form in front of retreating glaciers. These reservoirs are...
An important question stated in the presented paper is: Could rotifers be the indicators of climate change in the Antarctic environments? Rotifers are one of the most important components of the invertebrate fauna of the Antarctic freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. However, investigations of their distribution, diversity and an ecological role in the environment have been widely neglected, mainly...
This study presents changes in the concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in two streams in Western Antarctica (Admiralty Bay, King George Island, South Shetlands) that differ in trophic status. The results suggest a decline in concentrations of the determined forms of N and P between 2001 and 2005. The decrease ranged from 9.3% for reactive phosphorus to 73.2% for ammonium-nitrogen. Such inferred...
The geographic position, astronomic factors (e.g. the Earth’s maximum distance from the Sun during winter), ice cover and altitude are the main factors affecting the climate of the Antarctic, which is the coldest place on Earth. Parts of Antarctica are facing the most rapid rates of anthropogenic climate change currently seen on the planet. Climate changes are occurring throughout Antarctica, affecting...
Over the last couple of years the Antarctic Peninsula region has been one of the fastest warming regions on the Earth. Rapidly proceeding deglaciation uncovers new areas for colonisation and formation of Antarctic tundra communities. The most evident dynamics, i.e. changes in both biodiversity and structure of tundra communities, are observed in the forefields of retreating glaciers. This paper presents...
Rapid changes in the major environmental variables like: temperature, wind and precipitation have occurred in the Antarctic region during the last 50 years. In this very sensitive region, even small changes can potentially lead to major environmental perturbations. Then the climate change poses a new challenge to the survival of Antarctic wildlife. As important bioindicators of changes in the ecosystem...
In the last few decades, changes of reproductive pattern of polar vascular plants have been observed, for the benefit of generative propagation. The reasons for this phenomenon are attributed to intensively following climate change, whose effects may be various. Warming causes the production of the greater number of generative structures, with higher quality. Our macroscopic observations conducted...
Material fluxes in the Arctic and Antarctic have been, in several respects, strongly affected recently. For example, atmospheric turbidity conditions are frequently subject to strong changes due to haze and dust transport episodes, which can cause considerable perturbations in the radiation balance of the atmosphere beyond regional scale. This, directly or indirectly, contributes to the increased...
Air temperature and precipitation conditions in the Kaffiøyra region in the summer season (21st July–31st August) for the period of 1975–2010 are described: 1) on the basis of data gathered in 18 expeditions during which meteorological measurements were done, and 2) on the basis of complete series of data combining both original and reconstructed data. The latter ones were obtained using data from...
Global climate changes which has been observed over the recent years affects organisms occurring in the Arctic seas and the functioning of the whole maritime ecosystems there. The research note presents and briefly analyses the biological diversity of the Arctic Ocean and the most important factors which change the relations between organisms and the environment in the Arctic.
The article presents and briefly analyses the issue of the European Union’s perspective on the problems of the climate change in the Arctic region and its geopolitical consequences. Offering an overview of the main documents in this area, the article concludes that the EU policy towards the Arctic is closely related with perceiving the climate change in polar regions not only in terms of new possibilities,...
An important question stated in the presented paper is: Could rotifers be the indicators of climate change in the Antarctic environments? Rotifers are one of the most important components of the invertebrate fauna of the Antarctic freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. However, investigations of their distribution, diversity and an ecological role in the environment have been widely neglected, mainly...
Rapid climate changes which have been observed over the recent years in both polar regions of the Earth, directly or indirectly affect vegetation dynamics. This article presents the main directions of the changes taking place in the recent years in tundra communities of both polar regions, based on original research carried out in the Arctic in Spitsbergen and in the maritime Antarctic on King George...
Polar vascular plants native to the Arctic and the Antarctic geobotanical zone have been growing and reproducing effectively under difficult environmental conditions, colonizing frozen ground areas formerly covered by ice. Our macroscopic observations and microscopic studies conducted by means of a light microscope (LM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) concerning the anatomical and ultrastructural...
The projected effect of climate change is the increase of both the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. An attempt has been made to study the extremes in temperature over two regions of India i.e. North-East Region (NER) and West Coast Region (WCR). A detailed analysis indicated that in the NER, ten stations indicate increase in annual extreme minimum but significant at four stations...
In the paper an Equivalent Water Thickness (EWT) determination as a way of observing gravity variations is described. Since raw data acquired directly from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment – GRACE satellites is unsuitable for analysis due to stripes occurrence, a filtering algorithm must be used. In this paper, authors are testing two isotropic (Gauss, CNES/GRGS) filters and two anisotropic...
The objective of this study was to investigate the performance of streamflow in a lowland mesoscale catchment in Poland under current and future climate conditions. Simulations of hypothetical streamflow in the future climate were facilitated by meteorological data sets from ensemble simulations from all over Europe with the Regional Climate Model CLM. Projections of precipitation and air temperature...
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