Development of Exhibit on Arctic Climate Change Called The Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely Exhibition

• Main Author: Stauffer, Barbara W.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; AIR; AIRCRAFT; ANIMALS; CLIMATES; EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES; FLUCTUATIONS; INDIGENOUS PEOPLES; MELTING; PRECIPITATION; SATELLITES; SEAS; WEATHER; CLIMATIC CHANGE; Arctic; Canada; Greenland; Climate change; Ice Sheet; inuit; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/946425; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/946425

The exhibition, The Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely, was developed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) as a part of the museum’s Forces of Change exhibit series on global change. It opened to the public in Spring 2006, in conjunction with another Forces of Change exhibit on the Earth’s atmosphere called Change Is in the Air. The exhibit was a 2000 square-foot presentation that explored the forces and consequences of the changing Arctic as documented by scientists and native residents alike. Native peoples of the Arctic have always lived with year-to-year fluctuations in weather and ice conditions. In recent decades, they have witnessed that the climate has become unpredictable, the land and sea unfamiliar. An elder in Arctic Canada recently described the weather as uggianaqtuq —an Inuit word that can suggest strange, unexpected behavior, sometimes described as that of “a friend acting strangely.” Scientists too have been documenting dramatic changes in the Arctic. Air temperatures have warmed over most—though not all—of the Arctic since the 1950s; Arctic precipitation may have increased by as much as 8%; seasonal melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased on average by 16% since 1979; polar-orbiting satellites have measured a 15¬–20% decline in sea ice extent since the 1970s; aircraft reconnaissance and ship observations show a steady decrease in sea ice since the 1950s. In response to this warming, plant distributions have begun to shift and animals are changing their migration routes. Some of these changes may have beneficial effects while others may bring hardship or have costly implications. And, many scientists consider arctic change to be a ‘bell-weather’ for large-scale changes in other regions of the world. The exhibition included text, photos artifacts, hands-on interactives and other exhibitry that illustrated the changes being documented by indigenous people and scientists alike.