1. Arctic Climate Change

2. The Arctic is warming at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world 3. Arctic influences weather and climate elsewhere 4. Svalbard 5. IPCC 2007: Ice free AO by the end of century 2012: 3.41 M km2 6. SWIPA 2011: likely within next 30-40 yrs Six IPCC AR4 models closer to observations; Sea ice-free summers likely by 2050. (Wang and Overland, 2009) Maybe before? Do we understand the processes? Are global models good enough on a regional scale? Large annual variability influence from weather events 2012 7. Small glaciers contribution to sea level Arctic 8. Sea level AR5: Increased estimates compared to AR4 Will continue for 1000+ yr Global temp. of 3 C may destabilise the ice sheets 9. Antarcticas response to climate change remains uncertain. However, the ice sheet is more than 10 times larger in volume than Greenland 10. Ocean temperature and salinity 11. 74 000 +8500 Fw export through gateways constant Precipitation and river runoff increasing Sea ice melting An extra amount of 8500 km3 fw accumulated in the Canadian Basin since 2008 Still accumulating Will be released with changing wind patterns If released rapid enough, we could see an unprecedented freshening of the Northern North Atlantic The first challenge is to capture the release 2500 3650 4000 12. Why impurities affect the snow albedo ? Pure snow: high albedo Snow contaminated by black carbon (BC) lower albedo 13. 1991-2000 14. 2056-2065 15. 2090-2099 16. Takk for oppmerksomheten! Thank you for your attention!