Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
The Freshwater Cycle and its Role in the Pan-Arctic System: Contributions from the NSF-Freshwater Initiative
Charles J. Vörösmarty1
1Complex Systems Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Morse Hall, 39 College Road, Durham, NH, 03824, USA, Phone 603-862-0850, Fax 603-862-0188, charles.vorosmarty@unh.edu
There is extensive and mounting evidence that the contemporary environment of the high north is changing and doing so over a broad, pan-Arctic domain. Water is central to the functioning of the climate, hydrology, heat balance, biology and biogeochemistry of the Arctic and is thus of critical importance to human society. Thus, Arctic environmental change must necessarily encompass changes to the hydrology of the region. Productivity, carbon balance, energy balance --in particular evapotranspiration-- and hence runoff are all coupled closely and will be affected by the combined changes in temperature and precipitation.
Over decadal time scales the stature and relative abundance of plants may be changing as well, producing new patterns of feedback to the climate system by altering regional-to global scale energy and carbon balances. Increases in freshwater transport to the Arctic Ocean are now clearly documented and may at some point reduce the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water, resulting in a cooling in the North Atlantic region. These changes have enormous biogeophysical consequences that in turn make them critical to society and sound policy-making.
NSF recently created the Pan-Arctic Community-wide Hydrological Analysis and Monitoring Program (Arctic-CHAMP) whose mission is to seek a better understanding of arctic hydrology and the natural linkages of hydrology with closely related atmospheric, terrestrial, and oceanic processes and cycles. An allied effort, the Arctic Freshwater Initiative (FWI), represents one of NSF's contribution to the SEARCH initiative. FWI, whose synthesis activities are being coordinated through Arctic-CHAMP, brings together atmospheric, terrestrial, and oceanic researchers to study the sources and fates of variations in the pan-Arctic freshwater cycle. A review of the status of these programs and how they are contributing toward a better articulation of arctic environmental change through SEARCH will be offered.
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