Polar climate change: a multidisciplinary assessment

Abstract

The rapid environmental changes in polar regions have been attracting considerable political, public, and scientific attention in recent years. The polar amplification is recognized as a robust feature of the climate system in response to carbon dioxide (CO2) forcing, resulting in sea ice loss, ice sheet melting, and methane release from permafrost thawing. From a physical perspective, this paper examines the polar amplification and sea ice changes for past and future scenarios using satellite, reanalysis, and climate model datasets. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we discuss the potential environmental, socioeconomic, and political effects associated with these changes. The observational data showed enhanced warming and rapid changes in sea ice cover in polar regions. Under the largest future CO2 forcing, climate simulations indicate an unprecedented rise in air temperature and fast sea ice loss, even in low emission scenarios. This results in a number of physical, environmental, and social-economic effects that need to be carefully considered. Polar climate change, however, offers new opportunities, including the local increase in fisheries and the opening of new navigation routes, which substantially impact the world economy. At the same time, it also implies critical environmental consequences associated with many socioeconomic and ecological risks, such as migration or extinction of populations and species; sea level rise; an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather in mid-latitudes; and infrastructure damage from permafrost thawing. Even with the advances and improvements in climate modeling in recent decades, the exact nature of these nonlinear interactions is still in debate.