Climate change reduces winter overland travel across the Pan-Arctic even under low-end global warming scenarios

• Published in: Environmental Research Letters
• Main Authors: Gädeke, Anne, Langer, Moritz, Boike, Julia, Burke, Eleanor J., Chang, Jinfeng, Head, Melissa, Reyer, Christopher P.O., Schaphoff, Sibyll, Thiery, Wim, Thonicke, Kirsten
• Other Authors: Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement Gif-sur-Yvette (LSCE), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Direction de Recherche Fondamentale (CEA) (DRF (CEA)), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF: 01LS1711C, This research was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the European Research Area for Climate Services ERA4CS with project funding reference 518 number 01LS1711C (ISIPedia project). CPOR acknowledges funding from the Horizon 2020 project CASCADES (Grant Agreement 821010). ML was supported by a BMBF grant (project PermaR-isk, Grant No. 01LN1709A). WT acknowledges the Uniscientia Foundation and the ETH Zurich Foundation for their support to this research. EJB was funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, under Grant Agreement number 641816, the ‘Coordinated Research in Earth Systems and Climate: Experiments, Knowledge, Dissemination and Outreach (CRESCENDO)’ project (11/2015–10/2020) and the Met Office Had-ley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS and Defra., European Project: 641816,H2020,H2020-SC5-2014-two-stage,CRESCENDO(2015)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2021
• Subjects: Arctic accessibility; Arctic transport; Climate change; Ice roads; Land surface models; Permafrost; Winter roads; [SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Arctic; Arkhangelsk; Chukotka; Global warming; Ice; khanty; nenets; permafrost; Sakha; Yakutia; Alaska; Arkhangelsk Oblast; Siberia
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03162106; https://hal.science/hal-03162106/document; https://hal.science/hal-03162106/file/G%C3%A4deke_2021_Environ._Res._Lett._16_024049%281%29.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abdcf2

International audience Amplified climate warming has led to permafrost degradation and a shortening of the winter season, both impacting cost-effective overland travel across the Arctic. Here we use, for the first time, four state-of-the-art Land Surface Models that explicitly consider ground freezing states, forced by a subset of bias-adjusted CMIP5 General Circulation Models to estimate the impact of different global warming scenarios (RCP2.6, 6.0, 8.5) on two modes of winter travel: overland travel days (OTDs) and ice road construction days (IRCDs). We show that OTDs decrease by on average -13% in the near future (2021-2050) and between -15% (RCP2.6) and -40% (RCP8.5) in the far future (2070-2099) compared to the reference period (1971-2000) when 173 d yr-1 are simulated across the Pan-Arctic. Regionally, we identified Eastern Siberia (Sakha (Yakutia), Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast) to be most resilient to climate change, while Alaska (USA), the Northwestern Russian regions (Yamalo, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Nenets, Komi, Khanty-Mansiy), Northern Europe and Chukotka are highly vulnerable. The change in OTDs is most pronounced during the shoulder season, particularly in autumn. The IRCDs reduce on average twice as much as the OTDs under all climate scenarios resulting in shorter operational duration. The results of the low-end global warming scenario (RCP2.6) emphasize that stringent climate mitigation policies have the potential to reduce the impact of climate change on winter mobility in the second half of the 21st century. Nevertheless, even under RCP2.6, our results suggest substantially reduced winter overland travel implying a severe threat to livelihoods of remote communities and increasing costs for resource exploration and transport across the Arctic.