"This New Snow Has No Name" - Sami Trying To Cope As Arctic Warming Moves At 4X Global Rate

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The Sami, the only indigenous people left in Europe, have more than 100 different words for snow. From seaŋáš, a fluffy, grainy snow that moves easily, to tjaevi, flakes that stick together and are hard to dig, the names are based on its texture, depth, density, and the harsh conditions of the Arctic winter. But the Sami of Sápmi, who are traditionally fishers, trappers and reindeer herders, do not yet have a word for what they are seeing more often on the ground.

“This new snow has no name,” said Lars-Anders Kuhmunen, a reindeer herder from Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost town, near the Norwegian border. “I don’t know what it is. It is like early tjaevi, which normally comes in March. The winters are warmer now and there is rain, making the ground icy. The snow on top is very bad snow and the reindeer can’t dig for their food.”

The Arctic is warming not twice as quickly as the rest of the world, as previously believed, but four times as fast, according to a paper published in Science this week. Sápmi, an area that stretches over parts of four countries – Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia – and is hemmed by three seas, recorded its hottest temperature for more than a century in July this year, hitting 33.6C (92.5F) during a summer heatwave.

EDIT

Warmer than average temperatures mean the snow that was semi-permanent throughout winter turns to rain, which in turn freezes on the ground, trapping lichen under the ice, so the animals cannot reach it. Thick snowfall, which also happens more often, adds to the problems by making it impossible for the animals to find the lichen by smell. These freeze-thaw and rain-on-snow events happen naturally in the Arctic, but they are happening more often and on a larger scale. There have been mass starvations of reindeer, in 2013-14 in Russia and in 2018-19 in Norway, and the herders have to go much farther afield in the past few years to find grazing ground.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/17/new-snow-no-name-sami-reindeer-herders-climate-disaster

[quaint]

1. Overwhelming sadness, no matter where you look.