Algae Growth in Arctic Lakes Another Reason Arctic Warming Faster than Expected – and Why Other Regions Will Too, Norwegian Researchers Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 10 – One of the anomalies of global warming is that the Arctic is experiencing temperature increases far greater than other places to the south and often far greater than earlier models of climate change had predicted, a pattern scientists have been looking into for some time.

            Part of the reason, they have said for some time, lies in the vagaries of the winds and currents; and part because pollution has turned the ice black and thus reduced melting. But now Norwegian researchers have identified yet another reason why the Arctic is melting faster than expected – and why this should worry people who live far further south.

            Having examined ten lakes in Svalbard and northern Norway, scholars from UiT the Arctic University of Norway say that even very small changes in temperature boosts the growth of algae and other plant life in these lakes (Marie Bulínová et al., “Increased Ecosystem Productivity Boosts Methane Production in Arctic Lake Sediments,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 130:7 (2025), reported at thebarentsobserver.com/news/arctic-lakes-may-contribute-to-global-warming-more-than-previously-thought/434886).

            This small increase in flora in Arctic lakesleads to the release of methane at far more rapid rates than anyone had anticipated and that in turn has contributed to the rise in temperatures which then accelerates climate change because methane is “over 25 times more potent than caron dioxide as a greenhouse gas” (ic3.uit.no/news/arctic-lakes-methane).

            “We were surprised by how clearly the productivity of the ecosystem was linked to methane production,” one of the authors of the authors of the study says. “Our results show that warmer and wetter conditions increase biological productivity in Arctic lakes, which in turn drives methane emissions from their sediments.”

            That pattern will accelerate the melting of the permafrost in the Arctic but it will also mean that global warming further south will be accelerated as the melting of the permafrost layer releases still more methane and that gas is carried further south to other regions, the authors suggest.