International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

Fig. 2.9-2. A small
moving drill was used
to make holes to
measure permafrost
temperature for the
BTF and PYRN-TSP
projects near Abisko,
northern Sweden.
(Photo: Frida Keuper)
298
IPY 20 07–20 08
In the Arctic, two contrasting studies set up baselines
of current biodiversity and population dynamics as
well as ecosystem processes for organisms in higher
taxa than microbes. ArcticWOLVES (Arctic Wildlife
Observatories Linking Vulnerable EcoSystems, no. 11)
project initiated comparable observations, mainly on
animals, and experiments at a range of sites in Arctic
Canada, Norway, including Svalbard, and Russia.
The ENVISNAR (Environmental Baselines, Processes,
Changes and Impacts on People in the Nordic Arctic
Regions, no. 213) project focused national Swedish
and international efforts, mainly on the physical
environment and vegetation, in one geographic area,
Swedish Lapland. ENVISNAR facilitated the analysis of
unique long-term (up to 97 years) data on temperature
trends, precipitation extremes, snow depth, snow
pack structure, lake ice formation and melt timing,
permafrost temperatures and active layer depth
changes: most showed an accelerating change since
the late 1980s (Callaghan et al., submitted: Johansson
et al., 2008). ENVISNAR facilitated the research at
Abisko by many projects and other IPY consortia such
as ABACUS and BTF (see below). It provided logistics
including helicopter support (courtesy of the Swedish
Polar Secretariat – Fig. 2.9-2) and funding through
the EU project ATANS for representatives of over 50
projects to set up baseline information.
To better understand small-scale changes in vegetation,
and create a model baseline for future projections,
one ENVISNAR sub-project has downscaled past
and current climate to the 50 m scale (Yang et al., in
press; Fig. 2.9-3). This model is currently being used
to downscale regional climate model projections as a
driver for ecosystems and permafrost models.
Past Decadal Changes
IPY Project “Greening of the Arctic: Circumpolar
Biomass” (GOA, no. 139) used a hierarchical analysis of
vegetation change based on a multi-scale set of GIS
data bases, and ground information at several sites
along two long, north-south transects across the full
Arctic climate gradient.
GOA studied 1982-2008 trends in sea-ice
concentrations, summer warmth index and the
annual Maximum Normalized Difference Vegetation
Index (MaxNDVI, an index of the photosynthetic
capacity of the vegetation). Sea-ice concentrations
have declined and summer land temperatures have
increased in all Arctic coastal areas. The changes in
MaxNDVI have been much greater in North America
(+14%) than in Eurasia (+3%). The greatest increases
of MaxNDVI occurred along the 50-km coastal strip of
the Beaufort Sea (+17%), Canadian Archipelago (+17%),
Laptev Sea (+8%) and Greenland Sea (+6%). Declines
occurred in the Western Chukchi (-8%) and Eastern
Bering (-4%) Seas. The changes in NDVI are strongly
correlated to changes in early summer coastal seaice
concentrations and summer ground temperatures
(Bhatt et al., 2010 in revision; Goetz et al., 2010 in press).
Examples from north-south Arctic transects in Russia
and North America studied within GOA, and examples
from other locations from the sub-Arctic to
high Arctic studied within the IPY “Back to the Future”
(BTF, no. 214) project, provide insights to where the
changes in productivity are occurring most rapidly. In
polar desert landscapes near the Barnes Ice Cap, Baffin
Island, Canada, recent repeat photographs 46 years after
the initial studies and under the auspices of the IPY
“Back to the Future” project show dramatic changes
on most land surfaces. The vegetation is increasing