of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. Impacts of Arctic Climate Change on National Security

• Main Authors: James Strickland, George Backus, Mark Boslough
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; ACIA; Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Climate change; Ice; permafrost; Sea ice; Alaska; Siberia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.542.8831; http://est.sandia.gov/earth/docs/CCNS_CCIM.pdf

The Arctic region is rapidly changing in a way that will affect the rest of the world. Parts of Alaska, western Canada, and Siberia are currently warming at twice the global rate. This warming trend is accelerating snow and ice loss, permafrost deterioration, coastal erosion, and other phenomenon that are a direct consequence of climate change. With its national security mission, Sandia National Laboratories is evaluating the impact of climate change on the Arctic as well as impacts that will potentially cascade to other parts of the globe due to those in the Arctic. In this paper, we summarize some of the underlying climate drivers and national security implications associated with the changing Arctic that are given in much more detail by Backus, et al., 2008 and Boslough, et al. 2008. Arctic Climate Changes Melting of Arctic sea ice has long been identified as one of the strongest signals of climate change. Ice cover is now disappearing at an alarming and unprecedented rate, well beyond the most pessimistic predictions. For example, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) Scientific Report provides a very complete, although now somewhat dated, review of the physical impacts of climate change on the Arctic region. The most cautious ACIA model projects a “near-total melting of Arctic sea ice by 2100. ” However, taking recent trends into account, there are now estimates that a seasonally ice-free Arctic could happen as early as 2013. By September 2007, according to the data shown in Figure 1, the ice cover had decreased to 4.28 km2, nearly 40 % below the long-term average.