Climate change and the long-term viability of the World’s busiest heavy haul ice road

Abstract

Climate models project that the northern high latitudes will warm at a rate in excess of the global mean. This will pose severe problems for Arctic and sub-Arctic infrastructure dependent on maintaining low temperatures for structural integrity. This is the case for the economically important Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road (TCWR)-the world's busiest heavy haul ice road, spanning 400 km across mostly frozen lakes within the Northwest Territories of Canada. In this study, future climate scenarios are developed for the region using statistical downscaling methods. In addition, changes in lake ice thickness are projected based on historical relationships between measured ice thickness and air temperatures. These projections are used to infer the theoretical operational dates of the TCWR based on weight limits for trucks on the ice. Results across three climate models driven by four RCPs reveal a considerable warming trend over the coming decades. Projected changes in ice thickness reveal a trend towards thinner lake ice and a reduced time window when lake ice is at sufficient thickness to support trucks on the ice road, driven by increasing future temperatures. Given the uncertainties inherent in climate modelling and the resultant projections, caution should be exercised in interpreting the magnitude of these scenarios. More certain is the direction of change, with a clear trend towards winter warming that will reduce the operation time window of the TCWR. This illustrates the need for planners and policymakers to consider future changes in climate when planning annual haulage along the TCWR.

Assessing Habitat Suitability of Parasitic Plant Cistanche deserticola in Northwest China under Future Climate Scenarios

“…With the increase of RCPs, the distribution of centroid gradually would move northwest (Figure 8b). Hence, our results were consistent with the previous studies [66,67].…”

Climate impacts on soil erosion and muddy flooding at 1.5 versus 2°C warming

“…Future climate scenarios were downscaled using a two‐step approach, which first involves spatially downscaling monthly climate scenarios from GCM/ESM grid box scale to the same scale as the observed climate, followed by temporal downscaling of monthly scenarios to daily—necessary for perturbing CLIGEN to represent future climatic conditions in WEPP. This approach has been applied in various hydrological and soil erosion modelling studies (e.g., Zhang, ; Zhang, Chen, Garbrecht, & Brissette, ; Chen, Zhang, & Brissette, ; Mullan, Vandaele, et al, ; Mullan et al, ). Spatial downscaling was applied using quantile mapping to bias correct the GCM/ESM data.…”

“…The -necessary for perturbing CLIGEN to represent future climatic conditions in WEPP. This approach has been applied in various hydrological and soil erosion modelling studies (e.g., Zhang, 2005;Zhang, Chen, Garbrecht, & Brissette, 2012;Chen, Zhang, & Brissette, 2014;Mullan, Vandaele, et al, 2016;Mullan et al, 2017). Spatial downscaling was applied using quantile mapping to bias correct the GCM/ESM data.…”

Integrating Perspectives to Understand Lake Ice Dynamics in a Changing World

“…Long‐term observations of ice cover indicate shorter ice cover duration for lakes around the Northern Hemisphere, with strong linkages to climate change (Benson et al, 2012; Magnuson et al, 2000; Sharma et al, 2019). These long‐term climate effects sparked an increased interest in winter limnology (Hampton, Galloway, et al, 2017; Salonen et al, 2009), its broader importance to limnological processes and food webs (Jeppesen et al, 2003; Powers et al, 2017), and implications to the ecological goods and services that lakes provide (Brander, 2007; Mullan et al, 2017). The majority of working knowledge in freshwater winter limnology comes from in situ data collection; however, technological advances and remote sensing data sets provide the means to push the boundaries of this discipline.…”