A recent study led by a SUNY-ESF graduate student found that global climate change is affecting the water cycle, leading to flooding and drought.

Tamir Puntsag, a graduate student at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, is the lead author on the study that found changes in the distribution of water, specifically in the northeastern United States, according to a press release on the SUNY-ESF website.

“(The study) shows that climate change affects not only temperature, but the water cycle too,” said Myron Mitchell, co-author of the study and Puntsag’s major professor.

Puntsag was unable to comment for this story because she was at home in Mongolia.

After analyzing the samples using isotopic analysis, researchers were able to detect that the changes in the water cycle are associated with the changing of the polar vortex, which is a tight circulation of very cold air in the Arctic, Mitchell said.

As the Arctic temperatures have risen and the amount of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has declined, Mitchell said the strength of the polar vortex has decreased, allowing cold air to slip into the northeastern U.S., bringing with it water from the north Atlantic Ocean.

This has led to greater precipitation in the northeastern U.S. during the winter, the study found. Due to the rise in temperatures, the precipitation tends to be in the form of rain rather than snow. These changes have produced areas of greater flooding and greater drought, Mitchell said.

“If this continues, we might hypothesize that during the winter we will continue to get more rain, changing the availability periods of water in the northeast,” Mitchell said.

The change in the availability period of water can have detrimental effects, including a lack of water during the growing season and a scarcity of drinking water, Mitchell said. It can also be harmful for wildlife including fish and trees, Mitchell said.

The study was conducted using water samples that were archived at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. Samples used in the study were weekly precipitation samples collected between 1968 and 2010, Mitchell said.

“The collection period (of water samples) has been over a time in which we have seen a remarkable warming of the earth,” Mitchell said. “This gives us a tool for looking at the effect of climate change.”

Through analysis of the neutrons in the water samples, researchers, including Puntsag, were able to tell where the water had originated, as some water sources are richer in neutrons than others, Mitchell added.

“In the later years, we saw more water derived from evaporation of the Arctic and the North Atlantic oceans,” Puntsag said in the release.

Studies regarding changes in the water cycle have been conducted in the past, but most used yearly records, Mitchell said, adding that the weekly values used in this study created a fineness of scale that made it unique.

“This study shows the real value of being involved in a university,” Mitchell said. “We can combine talents of different people of different ages and different backgrounds to do work that is of interest to the individuals, but also has importance for our understanding of environmental issues.”

Other researchers who participated in the study were John Campbell, a former doctoral student of Mitchell’s who is now affiliated with the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station in Durham, New Hampshire; Eric Klein and Jeffery Welker of the University of Alaska Anchorage; and Gene Likens of the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies, according to the release.

This study is part of Puntsag’s doctoral program in water and wetland resource studies, according to the release.

Published on March 20, 2016 at 10:38 pm

Contact Taylor: tnwatson@syr.edu