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    Climate change reduces winter overland travel across the Pan-Arctic even under low-end global warming scenarios
    (Bristol : IOP Publ., 2021-2-10) Gädeke, Anne; Langer, Moritz; Boike, Julia; Burke, Eleanor J.; Chang, Jinfeng; Head, Melissa; Reyer, Christopher P.O.; Schaphoff, Sibyll; Thiery, Wim; Thonicke, Kirsten
    Amplified climate warming has led to permafrost degradation and a shortening of the winter season, both impacting cost-effective overland travel across the Arctic. Here we use, for the first time, four state-of-the-art Land Surface Models that explicitly consider ground freezing states, forced by a subset of bias-adjusted CMIP5 General Circulation Models to estimate the impact of different global warming scenarios (RCP2.6, 6.0, 8.5) on two modes of winter travel: overland travel days (OTDs) and ice road construction days (IRCDs). We show that OTDs decrease by on average −13% in the near future (2021–2050) and between −15% (RCP2.6) and −40% (RCP8.5) in the far future (2070–2099) compared to the reference period (1971–2000) when 173 d yr−1 are simulated across the Pan-Arctic. Regionally, we identified Eastern Siberia (Sakha (Yakutia), Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast) to be most resilient to climate change, while Alaska (USA), the Northwestern Russian regions (Yamalo, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Nenets, Komi, Khanty-Mansiy), Northern Europe and Chukotka are highly vulnerable. The change in OTDs is most pronounced during the shoulder season, particularly in autumn. The IRCDs reduce on average twice as much as the OTDs under all climate scenarios resulting in shorter operational duration. The results of the low-end global warming scenario (RCP2.6) emphasize that stringent climate mitigation policies have the potential to reduce the impact of climate change on winter mobility in the second half of the 21st century. Nevertheless, even under RCP2.6, our results suggest substantially reduced winter overland travel implying a severe threat to livelihoods of remote communities and increasing costs for resource exploration and transport across the Arctic.
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    No polarization–Expected Values of Climate Change Impacts among European Forest Professionals and Scientists
    (Basel : MDPI, 2020) Persson, Johannes; Blennow, Kristina; Gonçalves, Luísa; Borys, Alexander; Dutcă, Ioan; Hynynen, Jari; Janeczko, Emilia; Lyubenova, Mariyana; Martel, Simon; Merganic, Jan; Merganičová, Katarína; Peltoniemi, Mikko; Petr, Michal; Reboredo, Fernando H.; Vacchiano, Giorgio; Reyer, Christopher P.O.
    The role of values in climate-related decision-making is a prominent theme of climate communication research. The present study examines whether forest professionals are more driven by values than scientists are, and if this results in value polarization. A questionnaire was designed to elicit and assess the values assigned to expected effects of climate change by forest professionals and scientists working on forests and climate change in Europe. The countries involved covered a north-to-south and west-to-east gradient across Europe, representing a wide range of bio-climatic conditions and a mix of economic–social–political structures. We show that European forest professionals and scientists do not exhibit polarized expectations about the values of specific impacts of climate change on forests in their countries. In fact, few differences between forest professionals and scientists were found. However, there are interesting differences in the expected values of forest professionals with regard to climate change impacts across European countries. In Northern European countries, the aggregated values of the expected effects are more neutral than they are in Southern Europe, where they are more negative. Expectations about impacts on timber production, economic returns, and regulatory ecosystem services are mostly negative, while expectations about biodiversity and energy production are mostly positive.