How representative is Svalbard for future Arctic climate evolution? An Earth system modelling perspective (SvalCLIM)

This is chapter 1 of the State of Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) report 2020 (https://sios-svalbard.org/SESS_Issue3).

Situated in the Arctic and in a region with relatively pristine conditions, Svalbard is a very important and interdisciplinary observational supersite for the Arctic. In this SESS report, we investigate how representative Svalbard is for the Arctic region as a whole using data from numerical simulations with climate models.

In our study comparing model predictions of how temperature, precipitation, and sea-ice extent develop over time, we found that the changes in Svalbard resemble those in the Arctic as a whole, both during the warming period of the past few decades and during projected future climate change. However, some important differences were found (see Highlights).

Predicting and characterising climate change in Svalbard will be increasingly important in the 21st century as changes in near-surface air temperature, precipitation and sea-ice extent seem to occur at an extremely high pace in Svalbard, even higher than in the rest of the Arctic. Closer collaboration between experimentalists, observationalists, and the modelling community could help us understand the mechanisms underlying differences between observed and modelled climate changes. SIOS is in a unique position to coordinate and facilitate such collaborative research.