Scientists gather to discuss Arctic under shadow of changing climate

Top Arctic scientists will gather in Vancouver this week todiscuss everything from caribou populations to the high cost of food but underlying it all is the unsettling speed with which thenorthern climate is changing.

"It's a real challenge," said Ross Brown, an Environment Canadaresearcher who is to speak this week at the ArcticNet conference.

Brown's presentation will attempt to sum up the profound changesthat are expected in the Eastern Arctic if international meetingssuch as the one in Paris are unable to agree on how to bringgreenhouse gas emissions under control.

The Arctic is warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth about twice the rate of the global average. That means that airtemperatures will increase by at least four degrees by 2050 and asmuch as eight if nothing is done.

The pace of warming is picking up. Most of what has occurred sofar has taken place since 1993.

Brown's report outlines drastic changes that will face the Arcticif climate change goes unchecked. The ground will be snow-coveredfor about 30 fewer days. Precipitation will increase by anywherefrom eight to 26 per cent, most of it in spring and fall.

Lakes and rivers will see a month's less ice. What there is willbe up to 30 centimetres thinner.

Sea ice will thin out by as much as 45 centimetres. The iceseason could be seven weeks shorter and a nearly ice-free summercould develop sometime between 2020 and 2040.

Glaciers are melting more quickly now than at any time in thelast 2,000 years so quickly that Canada's Arctic islands are nowthe world's third-largest contributor to sea-level rise.

Although conclusive data is lacking, early results also suggeststorms will get more frequent and more intense.

Cyclones along theeast coast of Hudson Bay have already increased by more than 15 percent.

Complicating the whole picture is that changes would beexperienced differently in different regions of the Arctic.

Climate 'locally driven'

"The climate is very locally driven in these valleys and fiordswhere a lot of these communities are located," said Brown.

Climate models don't generally have a higher resolution than 50kilometres, Brown said. But local Arctic climates are often deeplyaffected by features as small as one kilometre a narrow oceanchannel, for example.

There's only one model capable of creating enough detail to suggest what might happen in the highly complex map of the CanadianArctic, Brown said.

"There's only one set of results to date that apply to changingice cover in that area."

ArcticNet is Canada's single largest gathering of scientistsstudying the North. More than 250 oral presentations are scheduledby everyone from oceanographers to sociologists.

All that research is conducted in front of a climate backdrop,said Brown. And all individual climate changes affect each other andadd up in ways we don't yet fully understand.

"There definitely will be cumulative impacts on traditional wayof life," he said.

"Your snow cover's decreasing. Your sea ice is decreasing. Yourpatterns of wildlife are going to change."