Effects of changes in climate on landscape and regional processes, and feedbacks to the climate system

• Main Authors: Terry V. Callaghan, Lars Olof Björn, Yuri Chernov, Terry Chapin, Torben R. Christensen, Brian Huntley, Rolf A. Ims, Margareta Johansson, Dyanna Jolly, Sven Jonasson, Nadya Matveyeva, Nicolai Panikov, Walter Oechel, Gus Shaver, Sibyll Schaphoff, Stephen Sitch
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Arctic; albedo; Climate change
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.470.8545

Biological and physical processes in the Arctic system operate at various temporal and spatial scales to impact large-scale feedbacks and interactions with the earth sys-tem. There are four main potential feedback mechanisms between the impacts of climate change on the Arctic and the global climate system: albedo, greenhouse gas emis-sions or uptake by ecosystems, greenhouse gas emis-sions from methane hydrates, and increased freshwater fluxes that could affect the thermohaline circulation. All these feedbacks are controlled to some extent by chang-es in ecosystem distribution and character and particularly by large-scale movement of vegetation zones. Indications from a few, full annual measurements of CO2 fluxes are that currently the source areas exceed sink areas in geo-graphical distribution. The little available information on