Climate Change in the Eastern Arctic

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The overarching goal of this research is to provide a climate change impact assessment for the Eastern Arctic region focussing on Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, and Hudson Strait. The work combines the basic science of climate conditions in the Eastern Arctic, the modelling of these conditions and the use of these in performing climate change impact assessments. Sea ice dominates the climate of the Eastern Arctic. This region has already experienced well documented climate change and will experience even more dramatic change over the next few decades. The proposed research projects stemming from this overarching goal will develop: 1) climate data analytics that will enable the detection of climate variability and change using nuanced climate metrics, especially suitable for climate reconstruction, 2) techniques to assess spatial distribution of sea ice and its underlying ice dynamics using cluster analysis, 3) a range of projections of sea ice conditions culled from coupled climate models and augmented by regional modelling and statistical downscaling using locally collected climate data, and 4) assessments of impacts of the projected climate change on local First Nations and Inuit communities, regional biota, and physical geography such as permafrost degradation.In the first project several novel techniques using nuanced changes in temperature which build on past NSERC funded work will be used to reconstruct sea ice conditions prior to the satellite reconnaissance era (pre-1970). This will enable a longer time series and the ability to tease out changes that are the result of cyclical behaviour in the climate system and those resulting from recent anthropogenically induced climate change. In the second project, sea ice dynamics within the major Eastern Arctic basins are examined by using cluster analysis on gridded sea ice data, a novel approach to understanding how sea ice develops, propagates and breaks up as part of the annual cycle. This will also help in understanding the regional variation of sea ice thickness. The third project updates pioneering work done in the Climate Lab that was published in 2005 that provided projections of sea ice change from a suite of coupled climate models. Aspects of the earlier work will be updated and then augmented using the results of regional climate models and projections generated using statistical downscaling. This will provide projections suitable for climate change impact assessments which is the focus of the fourth research project. Increasingly local communities are experiencing the effects of a changing climate impacting on food security, transportation safety, housing infrastructure and traditional livelihoods. These, and other impacts, will be assessed using a climate change impact assessment framework providing the necessary tools for adaptation strategies.