Climate Change in the Arctic - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 246

report. They saw the need for forward-looking Arctic cooperation to increase Arctic resili-
ence and to enhance Arctic Council leadership to minimize the human and environmental
impacts of climate change. Their senior Arctic officials were instructed “to consider how
best to follow up on the SWIPA recommendations in the future work of the Arctic Coun-
cil”.
At the same time, the ministers in Nuuk urged all parties to the UNFCCC to take ur-
gent action to meet the long-term goal of holding the increase in global average temper-
ature below 2°C of preindustrial levels. So far, so good. But these proved to be brave and
overambitious sentiments that came back to haunt at least two of the Arctic Council gov-
ernments when they sat down at the conference of the parties to the UNFCCC in Durban,
South Africa (2011), and Doha, Qatar (2012). It was clear that despite their words to the
Arctic Council, some Arctic countries were far from being prepared to adjust how their
economies obtain or use or sell hydrocarbon-based (fossil fuel) energy.
Very substantial carbon dioxide emission reduction is essential for the long-term sta-
bilization of the global climate. However, a number of short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs),
such as black carbon, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and methane, col-
lectively have a similar temperature impact at the present time as carbon dioxide. There-
fore, it is possible that emission reductions aimed at these substances could “buy time” for
slowing Arctic warming until carbon dioxide reductions can be agreed on and take effect.
AMAP produced several reports before the 2011 council meeting that explored the feas-
ibility of these policy options in technical and nontechnical formats. We will examine the
physics and chemistry of SLCFs in a later section entitled “Arctic Implications of Short-
lived Climate Forcers, Including Black Carbon”.
In earlier chapters, we saw how certain contaminants (notably persistent organic pol-
lutants and the heavy metal mercury) are brought to the Arctic by atmospheric and marine
circulatory patterns, mainly from far-distant mid-latitude sources. We also saw that tem-
perature plays a very important role in these pathways, particularly with respect to impacts
on the direction and speed of flux between environmental compartments or reservoirs (for
example, between air and soil). The next question was rather obvious. What would the