Scientists and reindeer herders work together to comprehend Arctic warming

Yar-Sale, a small town in Western Siberia on the Yamal Peninsula, held its annual reindeer festival in the spring of 2014, and it was a somber occasion. The normally snow-covered tundra had become an ice shield the previous November due to a rainstorm followed by a deep freeze. The ice was too thick for the reindeer to paw through to reach their main food source, lichen. Months later, that ground was still frozen in a place where winter temperatures can drop below -50°C. Already, tens of thousands of reindeer had perished from famine. Countless others were in danger of dying.

Vasily Serotetto, a well-known reindeer herder, came up to the scientists. He questioned if they could forecast when this kind of event, called seradt in the Indigenous Nenets language, might take place.

The request felt like a call to action for the scientists present. In essence, Serotetto was asking, “You scientists, what’s causing this?” biogeographer Bruce Forbes of the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland, says.

Forbes knew that the scientists had a wealth of satellite imagery of the Russian Arctic at their disposal to begin answering that query. But they didn’t know where to start searching through that enormous amount of data without more specific, first-hand information from locals, like the event’s date and location.

The two organizations are now working together to try to comprehend a phenomenon that has significant effects on a people’s way of life and the global effort to combat climate change. Rain on snow has been demonstrated to cause slush avalanches, alter soil and vegetation conditions, warm permafrost, hinder communications and transportation, and prevent herbivores from reaching foliage beneath the ice.

Although the numerous factors that contributed to the deadly icing in 2013 were partially explained by that paired knowledge, it is still unclear how such events can be predicted.

According to Laptander, in the past, the herders could predict the possibility of a challenging winter by using their extensive understanding of the various kinds of snow and ice, as well as their aptitude for interpreting weather patterns and animal behavior. However, the Arctic is warming up quickly, confusing those signals. She claims that “their old methods of predicting weather do not work anymore.”

Meanwhile, scientists frequently try to figure out how global weather patterns and climate change are impacted by warming-induced changes to the Arctic climate, such as melting permafrost and thinning sea ice (SN: 8/31/23). The input of local communities is necessary to determine where and what to zoom in on in order to assist those communities.

Forecasting difficulties
That was the situation at Yar-Sale. Forbes informed Serotetto that although scientists needed a starting point, they could be able to determine what caused the 2013–14 seradt. Segoletto gestured toward a map. Herders typically move from north to south during the winter. Many herders were too far south to turn back when the rain-on-snow event occurred, or they had misgivings about the severity of the calamity. With decades of experience as a herder, Serotetto managed to advance north. The northern peninsula, he found, had escaped relatively unharmed.

Serotetto marked the spot on the map where he had crossed the ice shield’s edge. According to Forbes, when researchers viewed satellite photos from that November day, “the line was exactly

We’re not working on finding the answer to that question right now. Travel was first impeded by the pandemic, and then Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. According to Forbes, research on climate change in the Russian Arctic has essentially stopped. It seems like half of the Arctic is off limits.

However, Forbes claims that the work in Yamal has spread to other Arctic regions. For example, sheep farmers and reindeer herders told Forbes last winter during a trip to Greenland that they had just recovered from their first significant rain-on-snow event. Forbes and his associates intend to use the knowledge they gained in Yamal to enhance their comprehension of that incident. Forbes states, “With Indigenous informants across Arctic North America, we now have a data-sharing network.”