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Changing Arctic snow cover: A review of recent developments and assessment of future needs for observations, modelling, and impacts
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Abstract
Snow is a critically important and rapidly changing feature of the Arctic. However, snow-cover and snowpack conditions change through time pose challenges for measuring and prediction of snow. Plausible scenarios of how Arctic snow cover will respond to changing Arctic climate are important for impact assessments and adaptation strategies. Although much progress has been made in understanding and predicting snow-cover changes and their multiple consequences, many uncertainties remain. In this paper, we review advances in snow monitoring and modelling, and the impact of snow changes on ecosystems and society in Arctic regions. Interdisciplinary activities are required to resolve the current limitations on measuring and modelling snow characteristics through the cold season and at different spatial scales to assure human well-being, economic stability, and improve the ability to predict manage and adapt to natural hazards in the Arctic region.
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Shrub expansion in tundra ecosystems: dynamics, impacts and research priorities
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is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands and at NINA in Tromsø. His research interests include the above and belowground response of Polar ecosystems to climate change, having great interest in the changes in winter climate and the impacts of extreme weather events for dwarf shrubs, soil arthropods, and decomposition.
received his Ph.D. degree in Earth System Sciences from the University of Grenoble/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Grenoble, France, in 2009. Since then, he has been with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA. He has participated in polar deployments in Antarctica, Greenland, and northern Canada. His research interests include the investigation of climate evolution in polar regions by interpreting spaceborne microwave observations of snow-covered surfaces (terrestrial snowpacks, sea ice, and ice sheet), the comprehension of the relationships between passive microwave airborne and spaceborne observations and snow/ice physical properties using modelling approaches to provide climate-related variables to the community for the satellite era.
is a Professor of Physical Geography at the Hydrological Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, the coordinating lead author of the Polar regions chapters in the Third, Fourth and Fifth IPCC reports and the lead author of the international scientific assessments focused on the Arctic (ACIA, SWIPA).
is a Research Scientist with the Climate Research Division of Environment Canada located at the Ouranos Climate Consortium in Montreal, Canada. His research interests include documenting and understanding snow-cover variability and change, the representation of snow processes in climate and hydrological models and the validation of snow cover in regional and global climate models.
is an Arctic Ecologist and her research focuses on food web interactions in the Arctic tundra, ecosystem monitoring in the context of climate change, and natural resource use in Arctic terrestrial ecosystems. Her experience includes field work mostly in Russia, but also in Canada, northern Norway, and Svalbard, as well as the use of molecular ecological methods such as genetics and stable isotopes. She works also on developing a collaborative monitoring programme for the tundra ecosystem between northern Norway and several sites in Russia.
received a Diploma in Physical Geography from LMU Munich in 2005 and the Dr. rer. nat. in Environmental Physics in 2009 from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is currently pursuing Postdoc at WSL in Davos, Switzerland, and LMU Munich. He has also used electromagnetic wave technologies to non-destructively record temporal changes in snow, firn and ice in alpine and polar regions.
received her PhD in 2011 from Stockholm University. Her PhD focused on ground truth validation of surface snow conditions at the Antarctic plateau. She is currently leading a research project funded by the Swedish National Space Board studying spatial and temporal variability of the snow pack in the Swedish mountain range using remote sensing.
is a Senior Research Scientist at the Arctic Research Division of Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include the development of active and passive microwave remote sensing techniques for cryosphere and in particular snow-cover monitoring. He has worked on several international projects on satellite snow remote sensing and also worked as the project manager for the ESA GlobSnow-1/2 projects between 2008 and 2014, which focused on constructing long-term essential climate variables concerning terrestrial snow cover.
is a Senior Scientist at IFAC-CNR, Florence. His main research interest includes microwave active and passive remote sensing for the study of the cryosphere using data from ground, airborne and satellite. He has been the leader of several national and international programmes granted by the National and International and Entities (PNRA, ESA, ASI, NASA and NASDA) and has also participated in the development and assessment of future spaceborne missions for studying the cryosphere.
is an Aquatic Biologist with a focus on Arctic inland waters, specializing in water chemistry, food web dynamics and using biochemical-tracing techniques. She holds a Garfield Weston Post-Doctoral Fellowship for Northern Studies, and is active in the Association for Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS).
is the Head of Monitoring Science at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station-Polar Knowledge Canada in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. He has been directly involved in arctic ecosystem monitoring and mapping, both in his recent position at CHARS, and for 12 years as Head of Ecological Integrity Monitoring for Canada’s National Park system. His background as an applied scientist is in the mapping, monitoring and interpretation of landscape scale pattern and process for scientific and land management applications.
is a Professor in Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden, Professor II at University of Bergen, Norway, and the Director of Tarfala Research Station, northern Sweden. She has established links between cross-disciplinary science and Sami knowledge to develop research focusing on the effect of multiple and cumulative impacts of climate and land-use change on mountain ecosystems.
completed her PhD in Physiological Zoology from the University of Oulu, Finland, in 2005. Her research focused on experimental and field studies in applied animal physiology of one of the most iconic Arctic animals—the reindeer. She is currently working at Thule Institute in the University of Oulu as the Transnational Access Coordinator of INTERACT (International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic) and as the Research Area Coordinator for the University of the Arctic. She is one of the co-leads in the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Cold Regions Initiative.
received his Dipl.Ing. and Dr.Sc. degrees in Environmental Engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 1984 and 1991, respectively. He is currently a Group Leader of snow physics at WSL and lecturer at ETH Zurich. He developed several new methods to measure the microstructure and stratigraphy of snow quantitatively in the field and in the laboratory.
defend his PhD thesis in 2003 on small rodents and birds of prey interactions. Since 1999, he has been leading a field group at Tundra monitoring site “Erkuta” in southern Yamal, where ecosystem-based monitoring of different groups of organisms was conducted on year-round basis. He has also led the expeditions to remote areas of Yamal, Taymir, Lena Delta and Kolyma Delta. He has been the leader of Yamal group of researchers at IPY projects “Arctic predators” and “Arctic WOLVES” and also an active participant of International World Working Group on Snowy Owl. He has also been the station manager of Labytnangi Research Station in the project “INTERACT”.
is senior research scientist in Natural Risks Assessment Laboratory and in the Research Laboratory of Snow Avalanches and Debris Flows, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. His interests include mass and energy balance of the snow cover, physical processes in snow and the quantification of snow-related natural hazards.
is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the Italian National Research Council in Torino. Her expertise is on climate variability and change in high elevation areas, with a focus on snow-related processes. She has worked on the representation of snowpack dynamics in land-surface models and on the assessment of the models uncertainties when they are used in “stand-alone” configuration or within global climate models.
is a Senior Scientist at MET Norway with a PhD in Geosciences (remote sensing and snow modelling). Her research focuses mainly on analysis of winter climate and snow conditions for various impact studies, namely snow avalanche warning, hydrological applications, geohazards, permafrost, and ecology (impact of snow cover on plants, reindeer, crops). She has been involved in numerous national and international projects dealing with analysis of past, present and future climate. Her specialities are land-surface modelling with emphasis on snow and soil schemes, and Arctic winter climate.
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Publisher ID: 770Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.