By Robert Corell, American Meteorological Society, and Pål Prestrud, Norwegian Polar Institute

See also:  Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment [Overview].  Produced (2004) by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA).  Available in hardcopy from Cambridge University Press in December 2004. See also U.S.-Led International Assessment Finds Arctic is Warming Rapidly, press release (dtd 8 Nov 2004) from U.S. Department of State.  (links added 8 Nov 2004).

Confronted by manifold evidence of environmental changes in the Arctic, the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and two working groups of the Arctic Council are undertaking an assessment -- called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) -- of the potential impacts of climate change on the Arctic region. The goals of this assessment are (1) to synthesize and evaluate current knowledge of climate variability, climate change, and increased ultraviolet radiation and their consequences in the Arctic, and (2) to provide useful and reliable information on these topics to Arctic residents.

It is the intention of ACIA to produce a peer-reviewed summary of current understanding of climate change and variability and increased UV radiation; a set of realistic climate change scenarios; and an examination of the potential impacts of climate change on ecosystems, infrastructure, and human society. We plan to publish the assessment in 2003. Separately, the Arctic Council's working groups Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) and Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauns (CAFF) will consider a range of policy recommendations designed to aid mitigation of or adaptation to the anticipated impacts. In addition to environmental impacts, the assessment will include information on potential socio-economic and human health impacts on Arctic residents. The IASC governing body has approved this study, and we expect the Arctic Ministers to approve it when they meet in Barrow in mid-October.

ACIA is being guided by a steering committee composed of representatives from IASC, AMAP, CAFF, Native indigenous peoples organizations, and all eight Arctic countries. Bob Corell is chair of the steering committee, and Pål Prestrud serves as vice-chair. An ACIA Secretariat has been established at the University of Alaska Fairbanks under the leadership of Executive Director Gunter Weller.

Progress to date has been slow but deliberate. The steering committee developed an implementation plan for the assessment and received final approval of it at the recent Ministerial meeting in Barrow. Agencies of the U.S. government have pledged to support the Secretariat and publication costs, and other Arctic countries have indicated a willingness to contribute as well. The steering committee has held five meetings to date and made a number of initial policy decisions regarding principal steps in the assessment, the scientific review process, and communications and outreach.

In February 2000, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hosted a scoping Workshop in Washington, DC, to plan initial steps in the ACIA process. At this workshop, over 40 people drawn from both Arctic and non-Arctic countries discussed strategies for scenarios, modeling and paleoenvironmental data and information; indigenous people, Native lands, and societal issues; marine and coastal systems; terrestrial environment and ecosystems; and infrastructure.

Some of the more significant conclusions of the workshop were:

• ACIA will be a circumpolar assessment, but it will most likely to necessary to base it on sub-regional assessments. A strong data and information base already exists for some sub-regions, while this is not true for others.
• The participation of indigenous people and stakeholders will be sought right from the beginning of the study.
• We should view Arctic processes in a global context. While ACIA is not formally part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is important that ACIA stay connected with IPCC at every step. ACIA should also develop or strengthen connections to other relevant bodies, e.g., the Global Climate Observing System.
• Policy issues and recommendations should be left to AMAP and CAFF and should not be part of the ACIA study proper.
• Considerable expertise in Arctic research exists in non-Arctic countries, and ACIA should try to access this resource.
• ACIA must have a modeling task group to examine the applicability of currently existing global climate models to the Arctic. It will probably be necessary to develop an Arctic regional climate model.
• There must be a scenario task group to begin development of realistic climate change scenarios that can be useful in assessing impacts on Arctic sub-regions.

In June 2000, the Danish National Environmental Research Institute hosted a meeting of the steering committee at the Danish Polar Centre in Copenhagen. At this meeting, committee members arrived at a preliminary outline of the fourteen chapters that will constitute the assessment. The chapters will be organized in three main sections that are concerned with the Arctic as part of the global climate system, impacts on physical and biological systems, and impacts on humans and their activities. A final synthesis chapter will give an integrated description of climate change impacts on ecosystems, economies, culture, human well-being, etc. The anticipated impacts of increased ultraviolet radiation will be treated in a number of different places in the assessment, especially in the chapters on terrestrial and marine ecosystems and human health.

Prior to the Copenhagen meeting, in response to a broadly distributed solicitation, the ACIA Secretariat had received in excess of 300 nominations of potential authors for various parts of the assessment. After lengthy deliberation, the steering committee decided who should be invited to serve as lead authors. The process of recruiting these lead authors is practically complete.

Let's try to look ahead a bit. Clearly, as our first order of business, we must complete recruitment of lead authors for the assessment chapters. The lead authors will become part of the steering committee to help guide further steps in the assessment. Then, with their assistance, we will recruit the contributing authors who can bring the required breadth of knowledge to bear on the assessment process and get the actual writing of the assessment underway.

In the near future we plan to assemble task groups on modeling and scenario development. Most likely, they will hold workshops before settling down to the job of writing their sections. And then, once the draft chapters in the assessment are complete, we will need to carry out a thorough scientific review process. Clearly, there are busy days ahead. Success in this effort will depend on the willingness of the international scientific community to become involved. And we will count on cooperation by the U.S. climate impacts assessment community.

Further information on ACIA is available on the website http://www.acia.uaf.edu/ and from Dr. Gunter Weller, ACIA Executive Director, at 907-474-7371.