Abstract: In the lower troposphere over the Arctic Ocean, ozone is often destroyed in spring by chemical chain reactions involving the reactive bromine species Br and BrO. The role of surface snow in generating reactive bromine has been suspected, but many details of the processes not understood. Using unique data such as BrO concentrations from instruments on buoys, Burd et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD026906) observed that the snowmelt onset date often coincides with the end of the reactive bromine season. They proposed that the decrease in snow-specific surface area and/or the occurrence of liquid water in snow induced by melting dramatically slows the rate of surface reactions generating bromine, indicating that the physical state of the snow is critical for bromine generation. Their suggestion is discussed, and a method to test it using novel instrumentation recently available is proposed.

Abstract: Fossorial locomotion is often considered as the most energetically costly of all terrestrial locomotion. Small arctic rodents, such as lemmings, dig tunnels not only in the soil but also through the snowpack, which is present for over 8 months of the year. Lemmings typically dig in the softest snow layer called the depth hoar but with climate change, melt-freeze and rain-on-snow (ROS) events are expected to increase in the Arctic, leading to a higher frequency of hardened snowpacks. We assessed the impacts of snow hardness on the locomotion of two lemming species showing different morphological adaptations for digging. We hypothesized that an increase in snow hardness would (1) decrease lemming performance and (2) increase their effort while digging, but those responses would differ between lemming species. We exposed four brown lemmings (Lemmus trimucronatus) and three collared lemmings (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus) to snow of different hardness (soft, hard, and ROS) during 30-min trials (n = 63 trials) in a cold room and filmed their behavior. We found that the digging speed and tunnel length of both species decreased with snow hardness and density, underlining the critical role of snow properties in affecting lemming digging performance. During the ROS trials, time spent digging by lemmings increased considerably and they also started using their incisors to help break the hard snow, validating our second hypothesis. Overall, digging performance was higher in collared lemmings, the species showing more morphological adaptations to digging, than in brown lemmings. We conclude that the digging performance of lemming is highly dependent on snowpack hardness and that the anticipated increase in ROS events may pose a critical energetic challenge for arctic rodent populations.