Improved analyses of Arctic climate change and its impacts on mid-latitude climate in a multi-century context from climate proxies and models

The Arctic warms at an unprecedented pace, and impacts include sea ice loss, glacier/permafrost melt and ecological changes.

There are also indications that Arctic warming also affects lower latitudes, e.g. by increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. Thus, Arctic change will have large economic and societal impacts.

To assess the ongoing change in a pre-industrial context, and provide a base for climate model scenarios of future climate, robust and representative climate data is needed.

Unfortunately, observations in the Arctic unevenly distributed and short, and reconstructions do not represent the whole region.

To remedy this, we will utilize the annual information from Arctic climate proxies, including shrubs from the very highest terrestrial latitudes, to provide the first high-resolution field reconstructions of Arctic climate, fully representing the whole region, for the past several centuries.

The reconstructions, in combination with state-of–the-art climate model simulations, will allow us an unprecedented opportunity to study Arctic climate change and its impact on lower latitudes, as well the role of various forcings and feedbacks through time.