Climate Change Impact on the Arctic Economy

• Main Authors: Pettersson, L., Kjelaas, A., Kovalevsky, D., Hasselmann, K.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Johannessen, O.; Bobylev, L.; Shalina, E.; Sandven, S. 2020
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Climate change; Global warming; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://publications.hereon.de/id/38412; https://publications.hzg.de/id/38412

The Arctic is intimately coupled to the global climate through its impacts on atmospheric and oceanic circulation, including via changes in the sea ice cover. Changes in the Arctic trigger concurrent processes that can have an impact also far beyond the Arctic region itself, e.g. impact on the East Asian Summer Monsoon System (Guo et al. 2014). Future changes in the Arctic may alter our understanding of many currently-understood weather and climate processes, see Chap. 10 in this book, with significant impacts on lives and livelihoods, not just in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, but also in large areas around the Earth. In Europe and Asia there is a growing concern in understanding how polar change will impact lower latitude climate and the socio-economy. Consequently, a better and multidisciplinary understanding of Arctic processes, mutual feedbacks and their predictability is needed. This can be achieved through enhancing the operational capacity for monitoring of the polar regions, including enhanced observation infrastructures within the polar regions, new advanced technologies to carry out measurements in this harsh and cold environment, and the establishment of sustainable comprehensive environmental knowledge, information and databases. Both observational records and the results of global climate modeling justify that the Arctic region is the area of Earth most sensitive to the increase of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, see Chaps. 3, 4, and 10 in this book. Therefore, climate change in the Arctic, particularly the reduction of sea ice and the increase in surface air temperature, can serve as important indicators of global warming. Changing sea ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean may have a substantial impact on the regional environment, including the marine ecosystem, and the economic activities in the Arctic (Glomsrød et al. 2017) both on land and in the ocean. The IPCC AR5 (IPCC 2014) conclude (in accordance with the adopted gradation of assessment of likelihood of outcomes and results, using ...