Potential impact of climate change on ecosystems of the Barents Sea Region

Abstract

The EU project BALANCE (Global Change Vulnerabilities in the Barents region: Linking Arctic Natural Resources, Climate Change and Economies) aims to assess vulnerability to climate change in the Barents Sea Region. As a prerequisite the potential impact of climate change on selected ecosystems of the study area has to be quantified, which is the subject of the present paper. A set of ecosystem models was run to generate baseline and future scenarios for 1990, 2020, 2050 and 2080. The models are based on data from the Regional Climate Model (REMO), driven by a GCM which in turn is forced by the IPCC-B2 scenario. The climate change is documented by means of the Köppen climate classification. Since the multitude of models requires the effect of climate change on individual terrestrial and marine systems to be integrated, the paper concentrates on a standardised visualisation of potential impacts by use of a Geographical Information System for the timeslices 2050 and 2080. The resulting maps show that both terrestrial and marine ecosystems of the Barents region will undergo significant changes until both 2050 and 2080.

Optimal Management Under Institutional Constraints: Determining a Total Allowable Catch for Different Fleet Segments in the Northeast Arctic Cod Fishery

“…Fourth, food-web dynamics and climate interactions may be more complex than sketched in our biological model. In particular, climate also plays an important role in ecosystem dynamics through fish physiology, competition and feeding relationships between the different species; especially as in our case, between cod, capelin and herring, and the lower trophic levels, zooplankton (Stige et al 2010;Roderfeld et al 2008). See Kjesbu et al (2014) and Diekert and Schweder (2017) for studies that look at the interaction of climate and management.…”

Changes in Arid Climate over North China Detected by the Koppen Climate Classification

“…The Köppen climate classification has been widely used to evaluate climate change impacts on climate types (Fraedrich et al 2001;Peel et al 2002;Dang et al 2007;Diaz and Eischeid 2007;Roderfeld et al 2008) and to diagnose numerical models (Lohmann et al 1993;Kleidon et al 2000;Shin et al 2004;Gnanadesikan and Stouffer 2006). The data used in the previous studies cover not only limited areas but also the entire global land-mass with the various spatial resolutions ranging from 4-km pixel to 2°−3° grid box, indicating the applicability of the Köppen scheme to the study of the regional climate changes.…”

Future of biodiversity in the Barents Region

“…Various climate change models predict significant changes in northern areas. Roderfeld et al (2008), for instance, predict that the tundra climate will decrease and the temperate climate types will extent to the north in future (also see Callaghan et al 1995;Kullman 2002). Moreover, the European part of the Subarctic and Arctic regions, i.e.…”