Climate Change in the Arctic

Köenigk, Torben; Key, Jeff; Vihma, Timo

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-33566-3_11

Cited by 31 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 113 publications

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“…The issue is further complicated by potential model biases in oceanic forcing on sea ice. The oceanic heat flux affects SIA but does not have a direct effect on air temperatures over ice-covered parts of the Arctic Ocean (Koenigk et al, 2020). Only in three models (EC-Earth3, MRI-ESM2-0 and NESM3), the sensitivity of SIA trend to their global warming rate is at same level as in observations, and these model also produce the high AA ratios.…”

Section: How Large Portion Of This Spread Is Due To Internal Variability and What Is The Role Of Modelmentioning

confidence: 85%

The Arctic has warmed four times faster than the globe since 1980

Rantanen

Karpechko

Lipponen

et al. 2021

Preprint

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In recent decades, the warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (AA). Numerous studies report that Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the globe on average. However, the lack of consensus of AA definition precludes its precise quantification. Here we show, by using several observational datasets which cover the Arctic region and adopting a simple definition of AA, that during the last 40 years the Arctic has been warming almost four times faster than the globe as a whole, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in literature. Furthermore, we compared the observed AA ratio to the ratio simulated by state-of-the-art climate models, and show that the models largely underestimate the present AA, a finding that is not very sensitive to the exact definition of AA. The underestimation of AA by climate models most likely results from their inability to realistically simulate feedback mechanisms between sea ice melt and atmospheric temperatures. Our results imply that the underestimated AA leads to biased projections of climate change both in the Arctic and mid-latitudes.

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Section: How Large Portion Of This Spread Is Due To Internal Variability and What Is The Role Of Modelmentioning

confidence: 85%

The Arctic has warmed four times faster than the globe since 1980

Rantanen

Karpechko

Lipponen

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…While sea-ice loss strongly contributes to changes in albedo (Perovich et al, 2007) and amplified warming (Arctic amplification; e.g., Koenigk et al, 2020), and sea ice and especially snow regulate light transmission and thus the light availability for phytoplankton (Light et al, 2008;Nicolaus et al, 2012), we regard these as sea-ice system services and will not discuss them in detail here. However, ice algae also absorb sunlight entering the sea ice and modify the spectral distribution and thus the quality of light reaching the ocean water below (e.g., Legendre and Gosselin, 1991;Perovich et al, 1998;Belzile et al, 2000;Mundy et al, 2007;Campbell et al, 2015;Kauko et al, 2017).…”

Section: Radiative Transfermentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change impacts on sea-ice ecosystems and associated ecosystem services

Steiner

Bowman

Campbell

et al. 2021

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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A rigorous synthesis of the sea-ice ecosystem and linked ecosystem services highlights that the sea-ice ecosystem supports all 4 ecosystem service categories, that sea-ice ecosystems meet the criteria for ecologically or biologically significant marine areas, that global emissions driving climate change are directly linked to the demise of sea-ice ecosystems and its ecosystem services, and that the sea-ice ecosystem deserves specific attention in the evaluation of marine protected area planning. The synthesis outlines (1) supporting services, provided in form of habitat, including feeding grounds and nurseries for microbes, meiofauna, fish, birds and mammals (particularly the key species Arctic cod, Boreogadus saida, and Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, which are tightly linked to the sea-ice ecosystem and transfer carbon from sea-ice primary producers to higher trophic level fish, mammal species and humans); (2) provisioning services through harvesting and medicinal and genetic resources; (3) cultural services through Indigenous and local knowledge systems, cultural identity and spirituality, and via cultural activities, tourism and research; (4) (climate) regulating services through light regulation, the production of biogenic aerosols, halogen oxidation and the release or uptake of greenhouse gases, for example, carbon dioxide. The ongoing changes in the polar regions have strong impacts on sea-ice ecosystems and associated ecosystem services. While the response of sea-ice–associated primary production to environmental change is regionally variable, the effect on ice-associated mammals and birds is predominantly negative, subsequently impacting human harvesting and cultural services in both polar regions. Conservation can help protect some species and functions. However, the key mitigation measure that can slow the transition to a strictly seasonal ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, reduce the overall loss of sea-ice habitats from the ocean, and thus preserve the unique ecosystem services provided by sea ice and their contributions to human well-being is a reduction in carbon emissions.

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“…The Arctic is one of the regions on the Earth experiencing major environmental changes, mostly due to global warming (Ims, Ehrich, et al, 2013). Polar regions warm faster than the rest of the world (Serreze & Barry, 2011) and the trend is projected to continue in the twenty‐first century (Koenigk et al, 2020). In Svalbard, higher annual mean temperatures (Nordli et al, 2014), warmer and wetter winters (Hansen et al, 2014), decreased snow cover duration and depth (Descamps et al, 2017), and declined sea ice extent (Dahlke et al, 2020) are indicators of ongoing changes in the climate system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Iterative model predictions for wildlife populations impacted by rapid climate change

Marolla

Henden

Fuglei

et al. 2021

Global Change Biology

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To improve understanding and management of the consequences of current rapid environmental change, ecologists advocate using long‐term monitoring data series to generate iterative near‐term predictions of ecosystem responses. This approach allows scientific evidence to increase rapidly and management strategies to be tailored simultaneously. Iterative near‐term forecasting may therefore be particularly useful for adaptive monitoring of ecosystems subjected to rapid climate change. Here, we show how to implement near‐term forecasting in the case of a harvested population of rock ptarmigan in high‐arctic Svalbard, a region subjected to the largest and most rapid climate change on Earth. We fitted state‐space models to ptarmigan counts from point transect distance sampling during 2005–2019 and developed two types of predictions: (1) explanatory predictions to quantify the effect of potential drivers of ptarmigan population dynamics, and (2) anticipatory predictions to assess the ability of candidate models of increasing complexity to forecast next‐year population density. Based on the explanatory predictions, we found that a recent increasing trend in the Svalbard rock ptarmigan population can be attributed to major changes in winter climate. Currently, a strong positive effect of increasing average winter temperature on ptarmigan population growth outweighs the negative impacts of other manifestations of climate change such as rain‐on‐snow events. Moreover, the ptarmigan population may compensate for current harvest levels. Based on the anticipatory predictions, the near‐term forecasting ability of the models improved nonlinearly with the length of the time series, but yielded good forecasts even based on a short time series. The inclusion of ecological predictors improved forecasts of sharp changes in next‐year population density, demonstrating the value of ecosystem‐based monitoring. Overall, our study illustrates the power of integrating near‐term forecasting in monitoring systems to aid understanding and management of wildlife populations exposed to rapid climate change. We provide recommendations for how to improve this approach.

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Climate Change in the Arctic

Cited by 31 publications

References 113 publications

The Arctic has warmed four times faster than the globe since 1980

The Arctic has warmed four times faster than the globe since 1980

Climate change impacts on sea-ice ecosystems and associated ecosystem services

Iterative model predictions for wildlife populations impacted by rapid climate change

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