06.05.2019

Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme AMAP: Climate Change Update 2019

Quelle: AMAP

Assessing Arctic Climate Change

Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme AMAP is a working group under the direction of, and reports to the Arctic Council. The AMAP programme is implemented in the circum-Arctic region. AMAP is designed to deliver sound science-based information for use in policy- and decision-making. Since 1997/98 AMAP has published several assessments and updates on Arctic climate change issues, for example on Arctic carbon cycle, Arctic ocean acidification, short-lived climate forcers and on Arctic climate impacts. AMAPs workplan includes work in support of adaptation actions for a changing Arctic. Its assessment activities are internationally coordinated, subject to rigorous peer-review and make use of the most up-to-date results from both monitoring and research.

AMAPs work on climate issues has been presented at several UNFCCC COP meetings, provided the basis for statements made by the Arctic Council Chairmanship and provided input to the IPCC's third assessment.

Updates to key findings

AMAP has now published its Climate Change Update 2019: an update to key findings of snow, water, ice and permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA) from 2017. The updates at a glance:

• Observed and projected annual average warming in the Arctic continues to be more than twice the global mean, with higher increases in winter.
• Arctic annual surface air temperatures in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 exceeded those of any year since 1900.
• Arctic winter sea ice maximums in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 were at record low levels, and the volume of Arctic sea ice present in the month of September has declined by 75 percent since 1979.
• Warming temperatures and extreme events are affecting the Arctic terrestrial landscape through expansion of shrubs into tundra, increased vulnerability to insect disturbances, regional declines in tundra vegetation, and increases in severe fire years. Marine environments are also affected: for example the loss of sea ice has triggered shifts in marine algal blooms, with potential impacts throughout the food web including krill, fish, birds, and mammals in marine ecosystems.
• Arctic glaciers, led by the Greenland Ice Sheet, are the largest land-ice contributors to global sea level rise. Even if the Paris Agreement is successful, they will continue to lose mass over the course of this century.

More at AMAP’s website (Download of the 'Climate Change Update 2019' and other documents, contact, ...)