in the Norwegian Arctic AUTHORS:
The first part of the paper gives a review of recent and projected climatic variations in the Norwegian Arctic. The annual temperature has increased in the Svalbard region and at Jan Mayen during the latest decades, but the present level is still lower than in the 1930s. Measured annual precipitatio...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.615.3582 http://met.no/Forskning/Publikasjoner/Publikasjoner_2002/filestore/klima-02-24.pdf |
| Summary: | The first part of the paper gives a review of recent and projected climatic variations in the Norwegian Arctic. The annual temperature has increased in the Svalbard region and at Jan Mayen during the latest decades, but the present level is still lower than in the 1930s. Measured annual precipitation has increased by more than 2.5 % per decade during the 20th century. Variations in atmospheric circulation may account for a major part of the long-term precipitation variations and recent warming, but not for the temperature variations up to the 1960s. Empirical downscaled scenarios for Svalbard Airport indicate a further increase in temperature and precipitation. The projected warming rate up to 2050 is almost five times greater than that observed for the last 90 years, while the rate of the precipitation increase is just half the one observed during 1912-2001. In the second part novel analyses of precipitation types in Norwegian Arctic are presented. Almost 75 % of the precipitation events at Svalbard Airport are reported as snow, and during 1975-2001 ca. 45 % of the precipitation amounts in Ny-Ålesund and Svalbard Airport was falling as solid precipitation, and just 25 % as liquid precipitation. The annual fraction of solid precipitation has decreased at all stations during the latest decades. The reduced fraction of solid precipitation implies that the undercatch of the precipitation gauges is reduced. Consequently a part of the observed |
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