CLIMATE change could be responsible for reindeer deaths. In a lethal chain of events, warming causes more rain to fall onto snow-laden pastures, forming ice crusts over the soil surface that leave the animals with nothing to eat.
Researchers had already noticed that winter rainfall seems to be followed by a lot of reindeer deaths. They thought this had to do with ice forming at the soil surface, but no one knew what weather conditions make rainfall likely, or why the ice forms.
To find out, Jaakko Putkonen and Gerard Roe from the University of Washington in Seattle analysed soil…
