Climate Change in the Arctic - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 243

The Arctic Messenger and the Arctic Council
HowdidtheArcticMessengergainavoiceonclimatewarming?Itisalongandcomplicated
story. The IPCC was established in 1988 and its first assessment report was published in
1990, the year before Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) was born.
Despite being undeniably responsible for bringing a consensus view on climate change to
the minds of the scientific community, it was not until its fourth assessment in 2007 that
the IPCC began to take a hard look at the Arctic. In 1994, Lars-Otto Reiersen, Lars-Erik
Liljelund and I met in Stockholm to decide what to propose as the subject matter for the
first AMAP assessment. By this time, we already knew that the second IPCC assessment
wouldagainbelargelysilentabouttheArctic.Wefoundthistroubling,andashorttimelater,
the AMAP working group agreed that the first full AMAP assessment (published in 1998)
should include a section on climate and stratospheric ozone depletion. The climate chapter
was organised by Elizabeth (Betsy) Weatherhead at the University of Colorado, who, with
Michele Morseth, was also responsible for editing the final chapter. Elizabeth had a very
challenging task persuading the circumpolar climate science community to jump on board.
However, she persevered with the patience of the biblical Job. We all owe her a great debt
because after the first assessment was published, the Arctic Council and the circumpolar sci-
ence community began to take notice.
Based on the findings of the 1998 AMAP assessment, the Arctic Council asked AMAP,
the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna working group (CAFF) and the International
Arctic Science Committee (IASC) to “provide a comprehensive evaluation of Arctic climate
changeandtheimpacts fortheregionandforthewholeworld”.TheUnitedStatesfundedan
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) secretariat under Gunter Weller at the University
of Alaska. A team of more than 300 specialists and representatives of circumpolar indigen-
ous peoples prepared the assessment under the integration management of Bob Corell from
the American Meteorological Society (United States) and Pål Prestrud from the Centre for
Climate Research (Norway). With others on the AMAP working group, I watched Lars-Otto