Title: How Climate Change Affects Arctic Society
1How Climate Change Affects Arctic Society
2A meta-analysis 2 approaches to integrating
empirical HD research
- (A) Retrospective
- Method study observable variations over time
- Goal infer causal processes
- Results multivariate, nonlinear complexity
- Challenges inferring process from data
quantifying relationships
- (B) Prospective
- Method model causal processes
- Goal infer variations over (future) time
- Results ifthen formulations decision tools
- Challenges specification of process
verification of results
32 approaches (continued)
- Challenge although logically sequential, the
two are difficult to formally connect
- Even when both occur within one project.
4Lawrence C. HamiltonNorth Atlantic Arc project
NAArcNSF Arctic Social Sciences and ARCSS
5Climate change and society
- Predictions about future impacts should learn
from the past.
- Evidence regarding historical climate impacts
tends to be ambiguous.
- Social factors complicate the interpretation.
- Climatic vs. social causality?
- Interaction between climate and social systems.
6Influences, feedbacks and interactions among
systems
Physical system change
Physical/social interactions affect biological
system
Biological system change
Human activities
Biological changes affect humans
7Three Greenland examples
- Norse Greenland settlements, ca. 9851450 AD.
- Seal hunting to cod fishing transition, ca.
19201970.
- Cod fishing to shrimp fishing transition, ca.
1970present.
- In each case we see interactions between climate
and human activities.
8Norse Greenland settlements, ca. 9851450 AD
- Norse pastoralists from Iceland settled southern
Greenland during the Late Medieval Warm Period.
- Found uninhabited, virgin landscape established
herding economy.
- Deforestation, overgrazing reduced productivity
of marginal lands, increased vulnerability to
climate.
- Settlements abandoned as climate worsened in
14th15th centuries.
9Greenland Ice Sheet climate indicator, 1000
1500 AD
10Three patterns (Amarosi et al.)
- Natural capital depletion virgin woods, fields,
hunting grounds buffered society from Arctic
climate.
- Synergistic interactions deforestation soil
erosion increased vulnerability.
- Intensification and technological fixes.
11The sealstocod transition,ca. 19201970
- Traditional culture depended heavily on seals.
- Warming trend, marked after 1920, reduced sea ice
for hunting.
- Overkills depleted seal populations.
- Greenlands growing human population faced
imminent crisis.
- Cod along warming SW coast waters became basis
for new economy.
12Climate, seals, people and cod, 19101937
13Former cod fishing village of Quassimiut, South
Greenland
14The codtoshrimp transition, ca. 1970present
- Cod stocks overfished by international trawler
fleet in 1950s1970s, then by Greenlanders in
1980s.
- Oceanographic changes curtailed cod reproduction
and inflow stock collapsed.
- Without cod predation, shrimp became more
abundant and a main pillar of present economy.
15(No Transcript)
16Cod and shrimp catches, smoothed sea
temperatures, 19502000
17A tale of two cities through the codtoshrimp
transition, 19701998
18Offshore shrimp trawler in Nuuk harbor, 2003
19Sisimiut, West Greenland, 2003
20Interaction effects often characterize the human
dimensions of climatic change
- Climate (physical) system changes affect
biological systems through interactions with
human resource-using activities.
- Biological system changes feed back to alter
human activities.
21References
NORSE SETTLEMENTS Amorosi, T., P. Buckland, A.
Dugmore, J. H. Ingimundarson and T. H. McGovern.
1997. Raiding the landscape Human impact in
the Scandinavian North Atlantic. Human Ecology
25(3)491518. SEALSTOCOD Mattox, W. G.
1973. Fishing in west Greenland 19101966
The development of a new native industry.
Copenhagen Meddelelser om Grrnland 197(1).
CODTOSHRIMP Hamilton, L. C., P. Lyster an
d O. Otterstad. 2000. Social change, ecology
and climate in 20th century Greenland. Climatic
Change 47(1/2)193211. Hamilton, L. C., B. C.
Brown and R. O. Rasmussen. 2003. West
Greenlands cod-to-shrimp transition Local
dimensions of climatic change. Arctic
56(3)271282.
22THE END