Proxy-based 300-year High Arctic climate warming record from Svalbard

AbstractWe used fossil Chironomidae assemblages and the transfer function approach to reconstruct summer air temperatures over the past 300 years from a High Arctic lake in Hornsund, Svalbard. Our aims were to compare reconstructed summer temperatures with observed (last 100 years) seasonal temperatures, to determine a potential climate warming break point in the temperature series and to assess the significance and rate of the climate warming trend at the study site. The reconstructed temperatures were consistent with a previous proxy record from Svalbard and showed good correlation with the meteorological observations from Bjørnøya and Longyearbyen. From the current palaeoclimate record, we found a significant climate warming threshold in the 1930s, after which the temperatures rapidly increased. We also found that the climate warming trend was strong and statistically significant. Compared with the reconstructed Little Ice Age temperatures in late eighteenth century cooling culmination, the present day summer temperatures are >4°C higher and the temperature increase since the 1930s has been 0.5°C per decade. These results highlight the exceptionally rapid recent warming of southern Svalbard and add invaluable information on the seasonality of High Arctic climate change and Arctic amplification.

Download Full-text

The Holocene–Anthropocene transition in lakes of western Spitsbergen, Svalbard (Norwegian High Arctic): climate change and nitrogen deposition

Journal of Paleolimnology ◽

10.1007/s10933-009-9338-3 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 393-412 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Sofia U. Holmgren ◽

Christian Bigler ◽

Ólafur Ingólfsson ◽

Alexander P. Wolfe

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Nitrogen Deposition ◽

High Arctic ◽

Arctic Climate ◽

The Holocene ◽

Arctic Climate Change

Download Full-text

Glaciers in the High Arctic and recent environmental change

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series A Physical and Engineering Sciences ◽

10.1098/rsta.1995.0073 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 352 (1699) ◽

pp. 321-334 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Keyword(s):

Mass Balance ◽

Climate Warming ◽

Meteorological Data ◽

Ice Cores ◽

High Arctic ◽

Ice Age ◽

Geological Evidence ◽

Recent Climate ◽

Severnaya Zemlya ◽

Energy Balance Approach

High Arctic climate change over the last few hundred years includes the relatively cool Little Ice Age (LIA), followed by warming over the last hundred years or so. Meteorological data from the Eurasian High Arctic (Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Severnaya Zemlya) and Canadian High Arctic islands are scarce before the mid-20th century, but longer records from Svalbard and Greenland show warming from about 1910-1920. Logs of Royal Navy ships in the Canadian Northwest Passage in the 1850s indicate temperatures cooler by 1-2.5 °C during the LIA. Other evidence of recent trends in High Arctic temperatures and precipitation is derived from ice cores, which show cooler temperatures (by 2-3 °C) for several hundred years before 1900, with high interdecadal variability. The proportion of melt layers in ice cores has also risen over the last 70-130 years, indicating warming. There is widespread geological evidence of glacier retreat in the High Arctic since about the turn of the century linked to the end of the LIA. An exception is the rapid advance of some surge-type ice masses. Mass balance measurements on ice caps in Arctic Canada, Svalbard and Severnaya Zemlya since 1950 show either negative or near-zero net balances, suggesting glacier response to recent climate warming. Glacier-climate links are modelled using an energy balance approach to predict glacier response to possible future climate warming, and cooler LIA temperatures. For Spitsbergen glaciers, a negative shift in mass balance of about 0.5 m a -1 is predicted for a 1 °C warming. A cooling of about 0.6 °C, or a 23% precipitation increase, would produce an approximately zero net mass balance. A ‘greenhouse-induced’ warming of 1 °C in the High Arctic is predicted to produce a global sea-level rise of 0.063 mm a -1 from ice cap melting.

Download Full-text

Ice-shelf collapse, climate change, and habitat loss in the Canadian high Arctic

Polar Record ◽

10.1017/s0032247400026954 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 37 (201) ◽

pp. 133-142 ◽

Cited By ~ 52

Author(s):

W. F. Vincent ◽

J.A.E. Gibson ◽

M.O. Jeffries

Keyword(s):

Warming Trend ◽

High Arctic ◽

Aerial Photographs ◽

Northern Coast ◽

Ice Shelf ◽

Canadian High Arctic ◽

Air Temperatures ◽

Biological Environment ◽

Ice Water ◽

Reduction In Area

AbstractEarly explorers in the Canadian high Arctic described a fringe of thick, landfast ice along the 500-km northern coast of Ellesmere Island. This article shows from analyses of historical records, aerial photographs, and satellite imagery (ERS-1, SPOT, RADARSAT-1) that this ancient ice feature (‘Ellesmere Ice Shelf’) underwent a 90% reduction in area during the course of the twentieth century. In addition, hydrographic profiles in Disraeli Fiord (83°N, 74°W) suggest that the ice-shelf remnant that presently dams the fiord (Ward Hunt Ice Shelf) decreased in thickness by 13 m (27%) from 1967 to 1999. Mean annual air temperatures at nearby Alert station showed a significant warming trend during the last two decades of this period, and a significant decline in the number of freezing degree days per annum. The ice-dammed fiord provides a stratified physical and biological environment (epishelf lake) of a type that is otherwise restricted to Antarctica. Extensive meltwater lakes occur on the surface of the ice shelf and support a unique microbial food web. The major contraction of these ice–water habitats foreshadows a much broader loss of marine cryo-ecosystems that will accompany future wanning in the high Arctic.

Download Full-text

Recent changes in climate and permafrost temperatures at forested and polar desert sites in northern Canada1This article is one of a series of papers published in this CJES Special Issue on the theme of Fundamental and applied research on permafrost in Canada.

Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences ◽

10.1139/e2012-019 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 49 (8) ◽

pp. 914-924 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Sharon L. Smith ◽

Jennifer Throop ◽

Antoni G. Lewkowicz

Keyword(s):

Climate Warming ◽

Thermal Response ◽

High Arctic ◽

Ground Temperature ◽

Data Sets ◽

Polar Desert ◽

Air Temperatures ◽

Recent Climate ◽

Temperature Records ◽

The 1960S

Climate and ground temperature records up to 30 years in length from permafrost monitoring sites in a polar desert at Alert, Nunavut, and a boreal forest at Table Mountain, Northwest Territories, were analyzed by season and year to assess the ground thermal response to recent climate warming. Methods were developed to standardize incomplete ground temperature data sets and to hindcast air temperatures for comparative analysis. The timing and magnitude of climate warming varied, beginning in the 1960s in the Mackenzie Valley and the 1970s in the High Arctic. Ground temperature increases occurred in both regions but varied in magnitude and timing in relation to the external forcing and permafrost conditions. Significant increases in winter air temperatures in both regions appear to be largely responsible for recent increases in ground temperature, particularly at the polar desert sites where snow cover is minimal.

Download Full-text

Evidence of recent climatic warming on the eastern Antarctic Peninsula

Annals of Glaciology ◽

10.3189/s0260305500018164 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 628-632 ◽

Cited By ~ 62

Author(s):

Pedro Skvarca ◽

Wolfgang Rack ◽

Helmut Rott ◽

Teresa Ibarzábal Y Donángelo

Keyword(s):

Antarctic Peninsula ◽

Warming Trend ◽

Western Coast ◽

Ice Shelf ◽

Orkney Islands ◽

Air Temperatures ◽

Recent Climate ◽

Summer Temperatures ◽

The Antarctic ◽

Larsen Ice Shelf

Air temperatures at the Marambio (MAR), Esperanza (ESP) and Matienzo (MAT) stations have been analyzed to investigate recent climate change on the eastern part of the Antarctic Peninsula. They are compared with data from the Oreadas station on the South Orkney Islands, the longest record available in Antarctica, and from the Faraday (FAR) station on the western coast of the Peninsula. Though the interannual variability is comparatively high and the stations are located in different climatic regimes, a pronounced warming trend shows up in all records. At MAR a temperature increase of 1.5°C has been observed since the beginning of the record in 1971. This is of similar magnitude to the increase at FAR on the west coast, which was 2.5°C for the longer period since 1945. The steady retreat and collapse of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf (LIS) coincided with this warming trend. of particular importance for the ice-shelf mass balance in this region are the summer temperatures which show a statistically significant warming trend at MAR and ESP. The representativity of the summer temperatures of MAR for northern LIS is confirmed by intercomparison with the parallel measurements at MAT which is located on the ice shelf.

Download Full-text

Winners and losers of Arctic climate change — insect and spider abundance variation across two decades in high-arctic Greenland

10.1603/ice.2016.105033 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Toke T. Høye

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

High Arctic ◽

Arctic Climate ◽

Abundance Variation ◽

Spider Abundance ◽

Arctic Climate Change

Download Full-text

Eurasian Arctic climate over the past millennium as recorded in the Akademii Nauk ice core (Severnaya Zemlya)

Climate of the Past ◽

10.5194/cp-9-2379-2013 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 9 (5) ◽

pp. 2379-2389 ◽

Cited By ~ 28

Author(s):

T. Opel ◽

D. Fritzsche ◽

H. Meyer

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Ice Core ◽

Ice Age ◽

Arctic Climate ◽

The Arctic ◽

Last Millennium ◽

Near Surface ◽

Barents And Kara Seas ◽

Arctic Climate Change ◽

Severnaya Zemlya

Abstract. Understanding recent Arctic climate change requires detailed information on past changes, in particular on a regional scale. The extension of the depth–age relation of the Akademii Nauk (AN) ice core from Severnaya Zemlya (SZ) to the last 1100 yr provides new perspectives on past climate fluctuations in the Barents and Kara seas region. Here, we present the easternmost high-resolution ice-core climate proxy records (δ18O and sodium) from the Arctic. Multi-annual AN δ18O data as near-surface air-temperature proxies reveal major temperature changes over the last millennium, including the absolute minimum around 1800 and the unprecedented warming to a double-peak maximum in the early 20th century. The long-term cooling trend in δ18O is related to a decline in summer insolation but also to the growth of the AN ice cap as indicated by decreasing sodium concentrations. Neither a pronounced Medieval Climate Anomaly nor a Little Ice Age are detectable in the AN δ18O record. In contrast, there is evidence of several abrupt warming and cooling events, such as in the 15th and 16th centuries, partly accompanied by corresponding changes in sodium concentrations. These abrupt changes are assumed to be related to sea-ice cover variability in the Barents and Kara seas region, which might be caused by shifts in atmospheric circulation patterns. Our results indicate a significant impact of internal climate variability on Arctic climate change in the last millennium.

Download Full-text

An integrated approach for tracking climate-driven changes in treeline environments on different time scales in the Valle d’Aosta, Italian Alps

The Holocene ◽

10.1177/09596836211025974 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 095968362110259

Author(s):

Anna Masseroli ◽

Giovanni Leonelli ◽

Umberto Morra di Cella ◽

Eric P Verrecchia ◽

David Sebag ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Integrated Approach ◽

Early Summer ◽

Ice Age ◽

Limiting Factor ◽

Alpine Treeline ◽

Growing Seasons ◽

Direct Measurements ◽

Soil Temperatures ◽

Summer Temperatures ◽

Local Station

Both biotic and abiotic components, characterizing the mountain treeline ecotone, respond differently to climate variations. This study aims at reconstructing climate-driven changes by analyzing soil evolution in the late Holocene and by assessing the climatic trends for the last centuries and years in a key high-altitude climatic treeline (2515 m a.s.l.) on the SW slope of the Becca di Viou mountain (Aosta Valley Region, Italy). This approach is based on soil science and dendrochronological techniques, together with daily air/soil temperature monitoring of four recent growing seasons. Direct measurements show that the ongoing soil temperatures during the growing season, at the treeline and above, are higher than the predicted reference values for the Alpine treeline. Thus, they do not represent a limiting factor for tree establishment and growth, including at the highest altitudes of the potential treeline (2625 m a.s.l.). Dendrochronological evidences show a marked sensitivity of tree-ring growth to early-summer temperatures. During the recent 10-year period 2006–2015, trees at around 2300 m a.s.l. have grown at a rate that is approximately 1.9 times higher than during the 10-year period 1810–1819, one of the coolest periods of the Little Ice Age. On the other hand, soils show only an incipient response to the ongoing climate warming, likely because of its resilience regarding the changeable environmental conditions and the different factors influencing the soil development. The rising air temperature, and the consequent treeline upward shift, could be the cause of a shift from Regosol to soil with more marked Umbric characteristics, but only for soil profiles located on the N facing slopes. Overall, the results of this integrated approach permitted a quantification of the different responses in abiotic and biotic components through time, emphasizing the influence of local station conditions in responding to the past and ongoing climate change.

Download Full-text