ABSTRACT. Hudson Bay experiences a complete cryogenic cycle each year. Sea ice begins to form in late October, and the Bay is usually ice-free in early August. This seasonally varying ice cover plays an important role in the regional climate. To identify secular trends in the cryogenic cycle, we examined variability in the timing of sea-ice formation and retreat during the period 1971-2003. The dates of ice freeze-up and breakup at 36 locations across Hudson Bay were catalogued for each year from weekly ice charts provided by the Canadian Ice Service. We used the nonparametric Mann-Kendall test to determine the statistical significance of the trends and the Theil-Sen approach to estimate their magnitude. Our results indicate statistically significant trends toward earlier breakup in James Bay, along the southern shore of Hudson Bay, and in the western half of Hudson Bay, and toward later freeze-up in the northern and northeastern regions of Hudson Bay. These trends in the annual ice cycle of Hudson Bay coincide with both the regional temperature record and the projections from general circulation models. If this trend toward a longer ice-free season continues, Hudson Bay will soon face important environmental challenges. Le test non paramétrique Mann Kendall a été utilisé pour déterminer la signification statistique des tendances alors que la méthode de Theil Sen nous a fourni un estimé de l'ampleur de ces mêmes tendances. Notre analyse statistique nous indique qu'il existe des tendances significatives vers une date de déglacement plus avancée dans la Baie James, le long de la côte sud de la Baie d'Hudson, et dans la partie ouest de la Baie d'Hudson. De plus, des tendances significatives vers un gel plus tardif ont été observées dans les régions du nord et du nord-est de la Baie d'Hudson. Ces tendances dans le cycle annuel de glace de la Baie d'Hudson coïncident avec les tendances des températures de la région de même qu'avec les projections des modèles de circulation générale. Si cette tendance vers une durée plus courte du couvert de glace continue, la région de la Baie d'Hudson relèvera des défis environnementaux importants dans un proche avenir.

The observations of community members and instrumental records indicate changes in sea ice around the Inuit community of Igloolik, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. This paper characterizes local vulnerability to these changes, identifying who is vulnerable, to what stresses, and why, focusing on local and regional use of sea ice for the harvesting of renewable resources and travel. This analysis is coupled with instrumental and sea ice data to evaluate changing temperature/wind/sea ice trends over time, to complement local observations. We demonstrate the relationships between changing sea ice conditions/dynamics and harvesting activities (i.e. dangers and accessibility), with specific emphasis on ringed 364 Climatic Change (2009) 94:363-397 seal and walrus seasonal hunting, to illustrate current sea ice exposures that hunters are facing. Community members are adapting to such changes, as they have done for generations. However, current adaptive capacity is both enabled, and constrained, by social, cultural, and economic factors that manifest within the modern northern Hamlet. Enabling factors include the ability of hunters to manage or share the risks associated with sea ice travel, as well as through their flexibility in resource use, as facilitated by sophisticated local knowledge and land/navigational skills. Constraining factors include the erosion of land-based knowledge and skills, altered sharing networks, as well as financial and temporal limitations on travel/harvesting. The differential ability of community members to balance enabling and constraining factors, in relation to current exposures, comprises their level of vulnerability to sea ice change.

The concept of transformation in relation to climate and other global change is increasingly receiving attention. The concept provides important opportunities to help examine how rapid and fundamental change to address contemporary global challenges can be facilitated. This paper contributes to discussions about transformation by providing a social science, arts and humanities perspective to open up discussion and set out a research agenda about what it means to transform and the dimensions, limitations and possibilities for transformation. Key focal areas include: (1) change theories, (2) knowing whether transformation has occurred or is occurring; (3) knowledge production and use; (4), governance; (5) how dimensions of social justice inform transformation; (6) the limits of human nature; (7) the role of the utopian impulse; (8) working with the present to create new futures; and (9) human consciousness. In addition to presenting a set of research questions around these themes the paper highlights that much deeper engagement with complex social processes is required; that there are vast opportunities for social science, humanities and the arts to engage more directly with the climate challenge; that there is a need for a massive upscaling of efforts to understand and shape desired forms of change; and that, in addition to helping answer important questions about how to facilitate change, a key role of the social sciences, humanities and the arts in addressing climate change is to critique current societal patterns and to open up new thinking. Through such critique and by being more explicit about what is meant by transformation, greater opportunities will be provided for opening up a dialogue about change, possible futures and about what it means to reshape the way in which people live.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the 1997/98 El Niño might have been the cause of the dengue fever epidemics in many tropical countries. Because of the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, the warm El Niño and the cold La Niña phases of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) engender significant temperature and precipitation anomalies around the world. This paper presents the results of a correlation analysis of past ENSO events with dengue epidemics across the Indonesian archipelago and northern South America. Our analysis shows that there is a statistically significant correlation at the 95% confidence level between El Niño and dengue epidemics in French Guiana and Indonesia and at the 90% confidence level in Colombia and Surinam. These regions experience statistically significant warmer temperatures and less rainfall during El Niño years. Public health officials could therefore strongly benefit from El Niño forecasts, and they should emphasise control activities such as insecticide sprayings and media campaigns concerning the potential breeding sites of dengue mosquitoes during these years.KEY WORDS: El Niño · Dengue · Epidemics · Temperature · Rainfall · Indonesia · South America Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherClim Res 19: [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] 2001 epidemiological data and because their climate is significantly impacted by ENSO. Guyana and Venezuela were not included in our analysis because of the large number of missing values in the Guyanese time series and the near eradication of dengue in Venezuela between 1970 and 1988. A secondary objective was to determine the temporal and spatial consistency of ENSO-generated climatic anomalies. In countries where a statistically significant relationship exists between ENSO and dengue epidemics, the absence of anomalous climatic conditions during an ENSO event suggests an explanation for the lack of an epidemic during this particular event. The spatial consistency of the climatic anomalies within a country is important, as dengue cases are usually reported as a national average. Our research constitutes a basis for the development of a predictive tool that can incorporate climatic indicators in order to help forecast the spread of dengue. METHODSAnnual dengue incidence data were obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO) and from national ministries of health. Although French Guiana does not report dengue cases to the WHO, suspected cases have been estimated (Reynes et al. 1993) and published in Fouque et al. (1995) for the period . Annual population estimates were obtained from the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, published by the Statistical Office of the United Nations, and the annual reports of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional office of the WHO. Also included in the latter reports are the annual number of house insecticide sprayings for countries of northern South America. We contextualised the dengue-ENSO relationship by tracin...

Climate change, as revealed by gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, and wind intensity, as well as sea level rise and changes in the occurrence of extreme events, is already affecting cultural heritage sites. Accordingly, there is a rapidly increasing body of research reporting on the impacts of climatic stressors on cultural heritage and on the assessment of climate change impacts on cultural heritage assets. This review synthesizes the international literature on climate change impacts on tangible cultural heritage by developing hazard‐impact diagrams focusing on the impacts of gradual changes in climate on: (1) the cultural heritage exposed to the outside environment, (2) the interiors of historical buildings and their collections, and (3) a third diagram associated with climate change and the impacts due to sudden changes in the natural physical environment (e.g., storm surges, floods and landslides, wildfire) in addition to sea level rise, permafrost thawing, desertification and changes in the properties of the oceans. These diagrams, which depict the relationships between various stressors and their impacts on cultural heritage, will allow other researchers, stakeholders, and potentially decision makers to determine the potential impacts of climate change on a specific cultural heritage asset without a separate examination of the literature. This review thus provides the current state‐of‐the‐art on the impacts of climate change on the tangible, built heritage, that is, monuments, archeological sites, historical buildings, as well as their interiors and the collections they hold, highlights the limitations of previous research, and provides recommendations for further studies. This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change