Climate change and projections for the Barents region: what is expected to change and what will stay the same?

Abstract

We present an outlook for a number of climate parameters for temperature, precipitation, and storm statistics in the Barents region. Projected temperatures exhibited strongest increase over northern Fennoscandia and the high Arctic, exceeding 7°C by 2099 for a typical 'warm winter' under the RCP4.5 scenario. More extreme temperatures may be expected with the RCP8.5, with an increase exceeding 18°C in some places. The magnitude of the day-to-day variability in temperature is likely to decrease with higher temperatures. The skill of the downscaling models was moderate for the wet-day frequency for which the projections indicated both increases and decreases within the range of −5-+10% by 2099. The downscaled results for the wet-day mean precipitation was poor, but for the warming associated with RCP 4.5, it could result in wet-day mean precipitation being intensified by as much as 70% in 2099. The number of synoptic storms over the Barents Sea was found to increase with a warming in the Arctic, however, other climate parameters may not change much, such as the persistence of the temperature and precipitation. These climate change projections were derived using a new strategy for empirical-statistical downscaling, making use of principal component analysis to represent the local climate parameters and large ensembles of global climate model (GCM) simulations to provide information about the large scales. The method and analysis were validated on three different levels: (a) the representativeness of the GCMs, (b) traditional validation of the downscaling method, and (c) assessment of the ensembles of downscaled results in terms of past trends and interannual variability.

Regional climate change projections for the Barents region

“…However, the EC-EARTH driven run still gives interesting insights on how the COSMO-CLM performs and how the projected changes are influenced by the driving model. These results are in agreement with other studies covering the same area (Benestad et al, 2016;Koenigk et al, 2015;Førland et al, 2009;Vikhamar-Schuler et al, in press), including both sta-275 tistical and dynamical downscaling approaches. Compared with the big ensemble of statistically downscaled models shown in Benestad et al (2016) our projections cover a large part of the projected uncertainties.…”

“…These results are in agreement with other studies covering the same area (Benestad et al, 2016;Koenigk et al, 2015;Førland et al, 2009;Vikhamar-Schuler et al, in press), including both sta-275 tistical and dynamical downscaling approaches. Compared with the big ensemble of statistically downscaled models shown in Benestad et al (2016) our projections cover a large part of the projected uncertainties. This can be attributed to the use of an ESM and scenario combination in this study, which covers weak (MPI-ESM-LR RCP2.6), moderate (MPI-ESM-LR RCP4.5) and strong (MPI-ESM-LR RCP8.5 and EC-EARTH RCP4.5) climate change signals over the target region.…”

Climate change and winter road maintenance

“…They conclude that the volatility of the winter temperature (December, January and February) is decreasing. Benestad et al (2016) draw a similar conclusion based on climate model data that the day-to-day variability in temperature in the Barents region is likely to decrease with higher temperatures. The diverging conclusions are influenced by application of, respectively, different methods, time scale, data from different geographical regions and time periods.…”

Between‐year changes in community composition shape species’ roles in an Arctic plant–pollinator network

“…These environmental changes have been reflected in known phenological changes in both plants and pollinators (Høye et al 2007, Høye and Forchhammer 2008, Schmidt et al 2016. Combined with the increase in severe weather and other perturbations due to climate change (Hassol 2004, Adger et al 2007, Steiner et al 2015, Benestad et al 2016, these phenological shifts imply that changes in which species are observed at a site and changes to species' roles may both increase as the Arctic continues to warm. Determining the amount of change caused by climate change versus random fluctuations is beyond the scope of the present study since the networks were observed at only four time points clustered fifteen years apart.…”