Announcements and News

‘The State of the Arctic Report Cards ( http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/ ) were released October 17th, 2007 at a press conference in Washington, DC.  These Report Cards are a collaboration between CAFF’s  Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP).

The purpose of the Report Cards are to provide a concise, scientifically credible and accessible source of information on recent changes in the Arctic.  They cover a diverse range of topics from Atmosphere to Sea Ice to Biodiversity to the Greenland Ice Sheet.  They represent a contribution from a large number of scientists from around the world.  Highlights from the report cards include:

·      Changing Arctic wind circulation patterns blowing warm air towards the North Pole, compared to the circulation patterns of the 20th century;

·      Summer sea ice extent has reached another record minimum;

·      Continued and consistent rates of ice loss for the Greenland ice sheet;

·      North Pole ocean temperatures returning to 1990s values, but currents are relatively warm around the edges of the Arctic Ocean;

·      Permafrost temperatures are stabilizing in both North America and Eurasia, but permafrost melt remains a serious problem;

·      Shrubs are moving northward into tundra areas, but treeline advance is much more variable and complicated by human practices such as from forest management;

·      Mixed trends in Arctic vertebrate populations with dramatic increases in some Arctic Goose populations whilst some barren-ground Caribou populations in the NWT have declined by as much as 80%.

The report cards will be updated annually and are an ongoing assessment using the 2006 State of the Arctic report (http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/soa2006/) as a benchmark for comparison.’