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Arctic Weather and Climate Patterns
Published in Neloy Khare, Climate Change in the Arctic, 2022
R. S. Maheskumar, S Sunitha Devi
Arctic climate change will affect local people and ecosystems, and the rest of the world because the Arctic plays a unique role in the global climate. Permafrost is melting, glaciers are receding and sea ice is disappearing. These changes will affect the rest of the world by increasing global warming further and raising sea levels. Global temperatures are expected to grow also during the 21st century. In the Arctic, this warming is expected to be substantially more significant than the worldwide average. The following changes are expected over the current century: the average annual temperatures are projected to rise by 3°C–7°C (5°F–13°F). The most significant warming occurring in the winter months’ precipitation is projected to increase by roughly 20%. Sea ice is expected to decline significantly, reflecting less solar radiation and rising regional and global warming. The area of Arctic land covered by snow is expected to decrease by 10%–20%.
Weight optimization of an enclosed stressed skin derrick designed for Arctic regions
Published in J. Parunov, C. Guedes Soares, Trends in the Analysis and Design of Marine Structures, 2019
Limiting working crews and equipment exposure to weather and wind is essential for workable conditions in an Arctic climate. Derricks are today mainly constructed as a structural framework and have limited areas were working crews can work without exposure. Figure 1 shows an example of a typical drilling ship with a conventional truss derrick structure. When used in Arctic climate, the working conditions for the crew are far from optimal; better solutions are needed where this type of structure has been winterized for Arctic operations. The low temperatures in the Arctic together with the wind are the greatest engineering challenges for designing a drilling rig suitable for temperatures below −40°C. The entire rig needs to be “housed” in order to achieve a comfortable and safe working condition and make the drilling operation manageable.
Effects on Ecosystems
Published in Julie Kerr, Introduction to Energy and Climate, 2017
The effects of climate change will be felt the strongest in the earth’s polar regions. Already temperatures have climbed by 2.4°C in some areas in polar regions, whereas the global average is 0.6°C over the past century. Weather conditions are so harsh that polar ecosystems must maintain a delicate balance to survive. In addition, because of their sensitive nature, the polar regions are sometimes the first ecosystems to show warning signs of climate change, such as acceleration in the melting of glaciers. In the Arctic, climate change is expected to be rapid and extensive. As temperatures warm up and ice melts, Arctic ecosystems will be impacted heavily over the next century. There is extensive sea ice at the periphery of the Arctic Ocean that forms and melts each year. These waters are important to the fishing industry, accounting for almost half of the total global production. Glacial decline, melting sea ice, rising sea levels, impacts on wildlife habitat, melting permafrost, impacts on native tribal inhabitants, and changes to plant life are all being affected in the Arctic today because of climate change.
Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Report
Published in Journal of Operational Oceanography, 2018
Karina von Schuckmann, Pierre-Yves Le Traon, Neville Smith, Ananda Pascual, Pierre Brasseur, Katja Fennel, Samy Djavidnia, Signe Aaboe, Enrique Alvarez Fanjul, Emmanuelle Autret, Lars Axell, Roland Aznar, Mario Benincasa, Abderahim Bentamy, Fredrik Boberg, Romain Bourdallé-Badie, Bruno Buongiorno Nardelli, Vittorio E. Brando, Clément Bricaud, Lars-Anders Breivik, Robert J.W. Brewin, Arthur Capet, Adrien Ceschin, Stefania Ciliberti, Gianpiero Cossarini, Marta de Alfonso, Alvaro de Pascual Collar, Jos de Kloe, Julie Deshayes, Charles Desportes, Marie Drévillon, Yann Drillet, Riccardo Droghei, Clotilde Dubois, Owen Embury, Hélène Etienne, Claudia Fratianni, Jesús García Lafuente, Marcos Garcia Sotillo, Gilles Garric, Florent Gasparin, Riccardo Gerin, Simon Good, Jérome Gourrion, Marilaure Grégoire, Eric Greiner, Stéphanie Guinehut, Elodie Gutknecht, Fabrice Hernandez, Olga Hernandez, Jacob Høyer, Laura Jackson, Simon Jandt, Simon Josey, Mélanie Juza, John Kennedy, Zoi Kokkini, Gerasimos Korres, Mariliis Kõuts, Priidik Lagemaa, Thomas Lavergne, Bernard le Cann, Jean-François Legeais, Benedicte Lemieux-Dudon, Bruno Levier, Vidar Lien, Ilja Maljutenko, Fernando Manzano, Marta Marcos, Veselka Marinova, Simona Masina, Elena Mauri, Michael Mayer, Angelique Melet, Frédéric Mélin, Benoit Meyssignac, Maeva Monier, Malte Müller, Sandrine Mulet, Cristina Naranjo, Giulio Notarstefano, Aurélien Paulmier, Begoña Pérez Gomez, Irene Pérez Gonzalez, Elisaveta Peneva, Coralie Perruche, K. Andrew Peterson, Nadia Pinardi, Andrea Pisano, Silvia Pardo, Pierre-Marie Poulain, Roshin P. Raj, Urmas Raudsepp, Michaelis Ravdas, Rebecca Reid, Marie-Hélène Rio, Stefano Salon, Annette Samuelsen, Michela Sammartino, Simone Sammartino, Anne Britt Sandø, Rosalia Santoleri, Shubha Sathyendranath, Jun She, Simona Simoncelli, Cosimo Solidoro, Ad Stoffelen, Andrea Storto, Tanguy Szerkely, Susanne Tamm, Steffen Tietsche, Jonathan Tinker, Joaquín Tintore, Ana Trindade, Daphne van Zanten, Luc Vandenbulcke, Anton Verhoef, Nathalie Verbrugge, Lena Viktorsson, Karina von Schuckmann, Sarah L. Wakelin, Anna Zacharioudaki, Hao Zuo
Many studies have already highlighted that one of the main factors controlling the strength and sensitivity of the meridional overturning circulation (AMOC, see Section 2.8) is the cycling of the freshwater at high northern latitudes (e.g. Stouffer et al. 2006, or Carmack et al. (2016) for a recent review). A delicate density balance exists indeed in the deep water formation regions of the North Atlantic (Mauritzen et al. 2012), so that only slight variations in nearby Arctic-North Atlantic freshwater exchanges can influence the large-scale ocean circulation (Mysak et al. 2005; Rahmstorf et al. 2005; Zhang and Vallis 2006). Importance of temperature-salinity compensation in the subpolar North Atlantic region is highlighted in Section 2.2 discussing relative impact of halosteric changes (Figure 2.2(c)). The Arctic climate is undergoing unprecedented and drastic changes, affecting all the components of the Arctic system. Many of these changes affect the hydrological cycle and the freshwater budget of the Arctic region and an increasing literature has been recently published on key emerging issues of the Arctic freshwater budget and its changes (see for instance Prowse et al. 2015a, 2015b; Carmack et al. 2016; Lique et al. 2016). The Arctic Ocean is freshening (Proshutinsky et al. 2009; Rabe et al. 2014; Haine et al. 2015), sea ice is retreating and thinning (see Section 1.7) and exchanges of salt with the bordering subarctic oceans are undergoing substantial changes (Beszczynska-Möller et al. 2011; Woodgate et al. 2012). Freshwater is stored within the Arctic Ocean in the form of relatively fresh ocean waters in the surface layer and sea ice. Observations are particularly sparse in the Polar Regions and modelling systems have been widely used and are a powerful tool to gain understanding on the Arctic freshwater system (Jahn et al. 2012; Lique et al. 2016).
Light from space illuminating the polar silk road
Published in International Journal of Digital Earth, 2022
Xiao-Ming Li, Yujia Qiu, Yacheng Wang, Bingqing Huang, Haiming Lu, Min Chu, Han Fu, Fengming Hui
The observed and projected annual mean air temperature reveals the Arctic is warming approximately twice the global average (Overland, Dunlea, and Box 2019), leading to the extensive shrinking of sea ice extent by 43% between 1979 and 2019 (Arctic Climate Change Update 2021: Key Trends and Impacts). Although existing uncertainties in simulating sea ice extent, the CMIP6 simulations show that the Arctic is likely to be practically ice-free in September at least once before 2050 in all scenarios assessed (Notz, and SIMIP Community 2020).