The Arctic: Indicator of Global Change By Patricia Cochran

The Arctic may be seen as geographically isolated from the rest of the world, yet the Inuit hunter who falls through the thinning sea ice is connected to melting glaciers in the Andes and the Himalayas and to the flooding of low-lying and small island states.

Patricia Cochran

What happens in foreign capitals and in temperate and tropical countries affects us dramatically in the North. Many of the economic and environmental challenges we face result from activities well to the south of our homelands; and what is happening in the far North will affect what is happening in the South.

Inuit are experiencing firsthand the adverse effects of global environmental changes. But we are not powerless victims. We are determined to remain connected to the land, and sufficiently resilient to adapt to changing natural forces as we have for centuries.

Discussion of climate change frequently tends to focus on political, economic and technical issues rather than human impacts and consequences. We need to be aware of the dramatic social and cultural impacts indigenous peoples face in coming years.

Eroded Lives

For generations Inuit have observed the environment and have accurately predicted weather and sea-ice conditions, enabling us to travel safely on the sea ice to hunt seals, whales, walrus and polar bears. Talk to hunters across the North, and they will tell you the same story: the weather is increasingly unpredictable. The look and feel of the land is different. The sea ice is changing. Hunters are having difficulty navigating and traveling safely. We have even lost experienced hunters through the ice in areas that, traditionally, were safe. As a result of melting glaciers it is now difficult, sometimes even dangerous, for us to travel to many of our traditional hunting and harvesting sites.

A young woman from Cape Dorset, Nunavut

Several Inuit villages have already been so damaged by global warming that relocation, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, is now their only option. Melting sea ice and thawing permafrost have caused damage to houses, roads, airports and pipelines; erosion, slope instability and landslides; contamination of drinking water; coastal losses to erosion of up to 30 meters per year; and melting of natural ice cellars for food storage.

For instance, residents of Sachs Harbour, a tiny community in the Canadian Beaufort Sea region, report melting permafrost causing beach slumping and increased erosion; increased snowfall; longer sea-ice-free seasons; new species of birds and owls, robins, pin-tailed ducks and salmon invading the region; and an onslaught of mosquitoes and black flies.

Plans are well under way to relocate certain Arctic communities. Climate change is not just a theory to us in the Arctic; it is a stark and dangerous reality. Climate change is undermining the ecosystem upon which Inuit depend for their physical and cultural survival.

The Arctic is of vital importance in the global debate on how to deal with climate change because the Arctic is the barometer of the globe’s environmental health. We are indeed the canary in the global coal mine.

The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment projects dramatic and drastic depletion of sea ice. In the next few decades year-round sea ice may be limited to a small portion of the Arctic Ocean around the North Pole. The rest of the Arctic will be ice-free in summer.

Polar bears, walrus, ringed seals and likely other species of seals are projected to virtually disappear. This is not to mention the millions of Arctic seabirds and fish. Our ecosystem will be transformed, with tragic results. Climate change in the Arctic is not just an environmental issue with unwelcome economic consequences. It is a matter of livelihood, food and individual and cultural survival. It is a human issue.

What can Inuit—only 155,000 of us—do about this global situation? First, we refuse to play the role of powerless victim. Responding to climate change has split the nations of the world. Our plight and the Arctic Assessment show the compelling case for global unity and clarity of purpose to forestall a future that is not preordained.

Our rights, our human rights, to live as we do and to enjoy our unique culture as part of the globe’s cultural heritage, are at issue.

Short-term business interests must change, and people must take stock of whether or not a way of life based on consumption is ultimately sustainable. What is happening now to Inuit will happen soon to people in the South. The experience of Inuit in the Arctic is shared by residents of small island states in the Pacific, many people in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

We are working on many fronts to convince the world to take long-term action. Climate change is not about scoring political points. It is about families, parents, children and the lives we lead in our communities throughout the world. More

 

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Want to cut Arctic warming in half? Curb emissions now, study says

Global warming is changing the Arctic so quickly that experts say we should expect an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer within just a few decades.

But a group of scientists says there is a way to spare the Arctic from more disastrous climate change. In a new paper, they say that reducing global carbon emissions now could cut Arctic warming nearly in half by century’s end.

Society already has released enough carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere that over the next few decades temperatures in the Arctic will continue to rise two to three times faster than in Earth’s middle latitudes, according to the study.

“Over the next 20 or 30 years, the fix is in,” said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead author of the scientific paper. “That means more access to drilling, shipping and resource exploration. But it's not very good news for polar bears or walruses that depend on the sea ice habitat.”

Starting mid-century, society’s decisions about how to address climate change could begin to kick in, Overland said.

If carbon emissions continue on their current trajectory, by century’s end temperatures across the Arctic could rise by 23.4 degrees in the late fall and 9 degrees in the late spring, according to the study, which used computer models to predict the effects of different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.

But if civilization levels off its emissions by mid-century, Arctic-wide warming would be limited to 12.6 degrees in the late fall and 5.4 degrees in the late spring, according to the paper accepted for publication in the journal Earth’s Future.

The Arctic is hypersensitive to climate change and is seeing some of the earliest and most severe effects because of a vicious circle known as “Arctic amplification.”

As Arctic sea ice shrinks to record lows, it is reflecting less sunlight and leaving behind more heat-absorbing ocean water. Thawing permafrost is increasing heat storage on land and raising temperatures even higher.

Already, the average annual temperature in the Arctic is 3.6 degrees higher than it was between 1971 and 2000, double the rise in lower latitudes during the same period, according to the study.

Overland conducted the research with three other scientists from the University of Washington, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The scientists wrote that their research “makes a strong case to begin mitigation activities for greenhouse gases,” adding that stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions by mid-century “is a plausible target if decisive actions are begun soon.” More

 

 

Lord Stern: It would be absurd to underestimate climate change risks

It would be "absurd" to claim the risks of climate change are small, economic expert Lord Stern said before the publication of a key scientific report on global warming.

Nicholas Stern

The latest international assessment of climate science makes it crystal clear the risks are "immense", and it would be extraordinary and unscientific to ignore the evidence and argue for a delay in addressing the problem, he said.

The former World Bank chief economist and author of the key 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change also warned that scientific projections and economic predictions were underestimating the risks of global warming.

While scientists recognised some potential impacts such as the melting of permafrost, which would release powerful greenhouse gas methane, could be very damaging, they were left out of models because they were hard to quantify.

Many economic models, meanwhile, "grossly underestimate the risks" because they assumed that growth will continue and the costs of climate change will be relatively small, he said.

"Both assumptions trivialise the problem and are untenable given the kind of change that could take place," Lord Stern warned.

Temperature rises of 3C or 4C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 would put humans "way outside" the conditions in which civilisation developed, and could cause major disruptions that would damage growth.

Hundreds of millions or even billions of people could be forced to move from where they lived, causing conflict, there could be large-scale destruction of infrastructure and important services provided by nature could collapse, he warned.

His comments come as scientists and government officials meet in Sweden to finalise the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report assessing the evidence for climate change and its causes, to be published on Friday.

"The IPPC report makes crystal clear that the risks from climate change are immense," Stern said.

The IPCC has come under fire from climate change sceptics since its last assessment in 2007 over mistakes discovered in that report.

Stern said any assessment of thousands of sources of information, such as the IPCC carries out, was likely to contain some errors, but the message from the scientific information was remarkably consistent.

The IPCC assessment showed a dangerous underlying trend, based on laws of physics known for 200 years, of the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases and their impact on temperatures, with immense risks as a result.

Stern said: "It would be extraordinary and unscientific to argue on the basis of 200 years of evidence that you're confident that the risks are small.

"Those who would have us delay have to argue they're confident the risks are small. It would be an astonishing statement to make in light of all this evidence.

He added: "It would be absurd to say you are confident that the risks are small."

There was a growing recognition from governments of the need to take action to address that risk, and he said he expected more countries to take the lead set by the UK and establish domestic laws to cut emissions.

Countries ranging from the biggest emitters, the US and China, through to Ethiopia and Mexico, were already taking action to tackle climate change and reduce greenhouse gases.

Stern called on the European Union to set a target to cut the bloc's emissions by half on 1990 levels by 2030 to show leadership on the issue.

He criticised moves within the UK government to rethink its five-year carbon target up to 2027 and its failure to set a goal to slash emissions from the power sector by 2030as undermining the certainty needed to invest in a low-carbon economy. More

 

Major methane release is almost inevitable

We are on the cusp of a tipping point in the climate. If the global climate warms another few tenths of a degree, a large expanse of the Siberian permafrost will start to melt uncontrollably.

The result: a significant amount of extra greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, and a threat – ironically – to the infrastructure that carries natural gas from Russia to Europe.

The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, and climatologists have long warned that this will cause positive feedbacks that will speed up climate change further. The region is home to enormous stores of organic carbon, mostly in the form of permafrost soils and icy clathrates that trap methane – a powerful greenhouse gas that could escape into the atmosphere.

The Siberian permafrost is a particular danger. A large region called the Yedoma could undergo runaway decomposition once it starts to melt, because microbes in the soil would eat the carbon and produce heat, melting more soil and releasing ever more greenhouse gases. In short, the melting of Yedoma is a tipping point: once it starts, there may be no stopping it.

For the first time, we have an indication of when this could start happening.Anton Vaks of the University of Oxford in the UK and colleagues have reconstructed the history of the Siberian permafrost going back 500,000 years. We already know how global temperatures have risen and fallen as ice sheets have advanced and retreated, so Vaks's team's record of changing permafrost gives an indication of how sensitive it is to changing temperatures.

Stalagmite record

But there is no direct record of how the permafrost has changed, so Vaks had to find an indirect method. His team visited six caves that run along a south-north line, with the two southernmost ones being under the Gobi desert. Further north, three caves sit beneath a landscape of sporadic patches of permafrost, and the northernmost cave is right at the edge of Siberia's continuous permafrost zone.

The team focused on the 500,000-year history of stalagmites and similar rock formations in the caves. "Stalagmites only grow when water flows into caves," Vaks says. "It cannot happen when the soil is frozen." The team used radiometric dating to determine how old the stalagmites were. By building up a record of when they grew, Vaks could figure out when the ground above the caves was frozen and when it wasn't.

As expected, in most of the caves, stalagmites formed during every warm interglacial period as the patchy permafrost melted overhead.

But it took a particularly warm interglacial, from 424,000 and 374,000 years ago, for the stalagmites in the northernmost cave to grow – suggesting the continuous permafrost overhead melted just once in the last 500,000 years.

At the time, global temperatures were 1.5 °C warmer than they have been in the last 10,000 years. In other words, today's permafrost is likely to become vulnerable when we hit 1.5 °C of global warming, says Vaks.

"Up until this point, we didn't have direct evidence of how this happened in past warming periods," says Ted Schuur of the University of Florida in Gainesville.

It will be very hard to stop the permafrost degrading as a warming of 1.5 °C is not far off. Between 1850 and 2005, global temperatures rose 0.8 °C,according to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, temperatures would rise another 0.2 °C over the next 20 years. That would leave a window of 0.5 °C – but in fact our emissions are increasing. What's more, new fossil fuel power stations commit us to several decades of emissions.

Soggy permafrost

What are the consequences? The greatest concern, says Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter in the UK, is the regional landscape. Buildings and infrastructure are often built on hard permafrost, and will start subsiding. "Ice roads won't exist any more."

The increasingly soggy permafrost will also threaten the pipelines that transport Russian gas to Europe. "The maintenance and upkeep of that infrastructure is going to cost a lot more," says Schuur.

As for the methane that could be released into the atmosphere, Schuur estimates that emissions will be equivalent to between 160 and 290 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. More

 

Ticking Arctic Carbon Bomb May Be Bigger Than Thought

Ticking Arctic Carbon Bomb May Be Bigger Than Thought by Eli Kintisch on 7 December 2012, 11:52 AM

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Scientists are expressing fresh concerns about the carbon locked in the Arctic's vast expanse of frozen soil. New field studies, presented here this week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, quantify the amount of soil carbon at 1.9 trillion metric tons, suggesting that previous estimates underestimated the climate risk if this carbon is liberated. Meanwhile, a new analysis of laboratory experiments that simulate carbon release by thawed soil is bolstering worries that continued carbon emissions could unleash a massive Arctic carbon wallop.

Disappearing Arctic ice, which gets most of the attention from climate scientists, is an effect of humanmade climate change. By contrast, the melting of frozen soil, or permafrost, can drive warming. As it thaws, microbes devour carbon previously locked inside, unleashing carbon dioxide—a potent greenhouse gas—in the process. The carbon dioxide amplifies the warming power of carbon pollution in a vicious feedback loop.

Scientists have struggled, however, to quantify this threat. Permafrost occurs on a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere landmass—from Alaska to Canada and across Siberia—but researchers have taken far too few readings to feel very confident about the risk. "We are working on really large landmasses with limited data," says physical geographer Gustaf Hugelius of Stockholm University. Measuring the carbon content of permafrost requires muddy field work with heavy drilling machinery, operated in remote areas, and satellite data help little.

Those logistical constraints have largely limited researchers' previous estimates of carbon to the top meter of permafrost. But scientists think that carbon down to a depth of 3 meters is susceptible to thawing and release as well. An influential 2009 estimate that Arctic permafrost held 1.6 trillion metric tons of carbon included only 45 field sites analyzed down to that depth. In the new study, Hugelius added 405 new analyses of field sites that went to 3 meters, some through new field work he and colleagues performed, some from archived data. Adding up the carbon found in different soil types he says, yields an initial new estimate of 1894 billion metric tons of carbon locked into permafrost across the Arctic, 13% more than the previous estimate.

After better quantifying the size of stored Arctic carbon, the next question for <http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/12/editor-content.html?cs=UTF-8> researchers is how much permafrost will thaw as the planet warms. A modeling study published earlier this year suggested that if global emissions trends stay constant, by 2100 permafrost holding 436 gigatons of carbon could thaw. But determining the size of the permafrost threat also requires calculating how much of the carbon in thawed permafrost will be decomposed by microbes and released as CO2. In a presentation at the meeting, soil biogeochemist Christina Schaedel of the University of Florida in Gainesville discussed that question. She analyzed nine previous studies in which researchers took samples of thawed permafrost to discover how much carbon would be released. In those studies, researchers incubated the soil in bottles at constant temperatures in their laboratories for a year or more. Over 50 years, she concludes, thawed permafrost could release 20% of its available carbon, a figure she called "a conservative estimate."

That could amount to a carbon pulse larger than 2 years' worth of global humanmade emissions. In terms of global climate change, the new studies show that "the actual situation is worse" than policymakers realize, says Peter Griffith, an ecosystems ecologist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The result could be an acceleration of impacts from humanmade greenhouse gas pollution: sea level rise, more intense droughts, and ocean acidification. "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic," he says.

Painting a more complete picture of the threat means tackling the data dearth, says Hugelius, who hopes new collaborations with Russian scientists will provide a wealth of archived soil data from various laboratories across northern Asia. In addition, Hugelius and Schaedel are members of a network<http://www.biology.ufl.edu/permafrostcarbon/> of scientists studying permafrost carbon in the Arctic, and Griffith is leading a new project by NASA in which scientists will fan out across the Arctic over the next decade to obtain more data on soil carbon and ice.

In terms of Arctic studies, "ice gets all the love," Griffith says. "That's because we have a very robust [satellite] capability for remotely sensing ice." To understand the threat hidden within permafrost, it's time for more scientists to get their boots dirty. More