A United Nations summary of the Arctic impacts described by a new international climate change report urges a dramatic leap into action before warming totally disrupts the lives of Far North people.
“The costs of climate change are already being paid by the peoples and communities of the Arctic,” said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, in a statement released April 10. “The report underlines how this bill is set to rise unless action is taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.”
Based on the evidence presented last week in the second chapter in Climate Change 2007, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Arctic governments must draw up a “sustainable development plan” in the face of thawing permafrost in certain locales, retreating summer sea ice and shifts in the natural world.
“Dramatic changes to the lives and livelihoods of Arctic-living communities are being forecast unless urgent action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases,” according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
Credit: NASA
“Wide-ranging thawing of the Arctic permafrost … is likely to have significant implications for infrastructure including houses, buildings, roads, railways and pipelines. A combination of reduced sea ice, thawing permafrost and storm surges also threatens erosion of Arctic coastlines with impacts on coastal communities, culturally important sites and industrial facilities.”
The main page of the UNEP website contains other links to climate change positions and IPCC pages. Among other things, the UN Arctic summary points out:
- A 3 degree C increase in average summer air temperatures could increase erosion in eastern Siberia by three to five meters per year.
- Toxic and radioactive materials stored and contained in frozen ground could be released to the environment if permafrost thaws.
- Inuit hunters must now navigate new travel routes in order to try to avoid unstable ice. Hunters must alter hunting seasons to track changes in animal migration.
- Though Arctic warming might increase agriculture and forestry, and reduce winter mortality, it will also trigger droughts, new pests and diseases, water contamination, plus psychological and cultural problems for residents.
“The communities and Indigenous peoples of this region are skilled in adapting to harsh and often dramatic changing conditions including sharp fluctuations in the scarcity and in the abundance of land and marine resources,” Steiner said. “However, the rapid changes likely in the future may overwhelm traditional coping strategies. It is thus also vital that communities are assisted in climate proofing centuries-old lifestyles in order to survive and to thrive through the 21st century,” he added.
Other details from the UNEP:
Permafrost
By the mid-21st century, the area of permafrost in the northern hemisphere is expected to decline by around 20 per cent to 35 per cent.
The depth of thawing is likely to increase by 30 per cent to a half of its current depth by 2080.
Permafrost thawing is already having impacts. It is the likely cause behind the draining away and disappearance of Arctic lakes in Siberia during the past three decades over an area of 500,000 square km.
The costs of relocating subsiding towns and villages could be high. The price tag for relocating a village like Kivalina in Alaska has been estimated to be $54 million.
Marine Resources Changes in river flows, ice regimes and the mobilization of sediments as a result of permafrost thawing are likely to have impacts on freshwater, estuary-living and marine biodiversity upon which local and indigenous people depend.
Lake trout, a cold water fish, is likely to be affected as will be the spawning grounds of fish and bottom living life forms as a result of increased sediments.
Important northern fish species, like broad whitefish, Arctic char, Arctic grayling and Arctic cisco are likely to decline as a result of changes in habitats and predatory species, perhaps carrying new diseases, moving into the warming Arctic waters.
Thinning and reduced coverage of sea ice is likely to have important knock on effects. Crustaceans, adapted for life at the sea ice edge, are an important food for seals and polar cod. Narwhal also depend on sea-ice organisms.
“Early melting of sea ice may lead to an increasing mismatch in the timing of these sea-ice organisms and secondary production that severely affects populations of the sea mammals,” says the IPCC report.
However more open water and other climate-related factors are likely to benefit fish stocks like cod, herring, walleye and Pollock.
Forests
Ten per cent and possibly as much as 50 per cent of the Arctic tundra could be replaced by forests by 2100. The narrow, remaining coastal tundra strips in Russia’s European Arctic are likely to disappear.
Meanwhile climate change is likely to favour pests, parasites and diseases such as musk ox lung worm and nematodes in reindeer. Forest fires and tree-killing insects such as spruce bark beetle are likely to increase.