NOAA's Role in Arctic Science Issues of National Significance

From: Background Information to Support the Presidential Transition

The Arctic, the Bering Sea, and the high North Atlantic are remote areas, yet they have dramatic impacts on the people and economy of the United States. The U.S. Arctic Research Commission has stated its priorities for Arctic Science as: quantifying the role of the Arctic in global climate; approaching Bering Sea ecosystem predictability; and improving human and environmental health in the Arctic. The NOAA Arctic Research Office was established in 1999 to demonstrate NOAA's interest in these areas and to promote more effective science planning within NOAA and between NOAA and its partners. Three science challenges are of immediate concern to NOAA and the Nation:

• Can we determine what caused the large-scale changes seen in the Arctic over the past few years (net warming and increase in the strength of the circum-Arctic atmospheric circulation) and estimate the effects of these changes on weather and climate in the Northern Hemisphere?
• Can we learn why there have been dramatic recent declines in critical marine species (sea lions, salmon) in the Bering Sea, and can we create a reliable scientific basis for anticipating such changes and improving living resource management?
• Can we quantify the real risks to Arctic species, including humans, from the unexpectedly high levels of contaminants present in the Arctic?

Responding to these challenges may permit the U.S. to avoid unanticipated impacts to its people and economy, and to adapt successfully when environmental changes do occur. NOAA is working with other Federal agencies, the State of Alaska, the academic community, and the other Arctic countries to create science programs with the complexity and scope necessary to answer these questions. The three programs described below are evolving rapidly as the scientific community and Arctic residents become more aware of the urgency of responding to these three challenges. NOAA has a central role in each of these programs and will undertake efforts to improve scientific understanding, provide essential products and services, and build bridges between scientists, policy-makers, and the public.

Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH)

An interagency program, the Study of Environmental Arctic Change, is being developed to understand the complex suite of significant atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial changes that has occurred in the Arctic in the last decades.¹ It has become clear that these changes are affecting virtually every part of the Arctic environment and are now having both direct and indirect repercussions on human society. There is evidence that many of these changes are strongly connected with the Arctic Oscillation (AO), which is apparently a natural mode of atmospheric variation that is potentially active over a broad range of time scales including perhaps climatic time scales. There is evidence that the AO itself may be strengthened by the anthropogenic rise in greenhouse gases, thus suggesting a human cause for some of the recent changes in the Arctic. There are other potential modes of large-scale human influence on the Arctic too, such as long-range transport of contaminants, and high rates of biomass removal from the marine environment. Because of this interplay of natural and anthropogenic forcing factors, we do not know if the recent complex of changes is part of a pattern of natural variability or the beginning of a long-term shift. We also do not know what feedback processes on climate or ecosystems may be involved, or what the long-term impacts may be. Because the observed changes have made it harder for those who live in the north to predict what the future may bring, we have named the complex of recent changes Onami, Inuit for "tomorrow."

SEARCH has been conceived as a broad, interdisciplinary, multi-scale interagency program with a core aim of understanding the complex of recent and ongoing intertwined changes (Onami). SEARCH includes four major types of activities:

• a long-term observational program to track the environmental changes;
• a modeling program to test ideas about the coupling between the different components of Onami, and to predict its future course;
• studies to test hypotheses about critical feedback processes; and
• an assessment component to understand the ultimate impact of the physical changes on the ecosystems and societies, and to distinguish between climate-related Onami changes and changes due to other factors such as resource utilization, pollution, economic development and population growth.

Results from SEARCH and other programs will provide the scientific underpinning for Arctic regional and global assessments of climate variability and change and associated impacts. Currently, the U.S., through both NOAA and the National Science Foundation, is providing leadership to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), a circum-Arctic activity under the auspices of the Arctic Council. SEARCH will support both the ACIA assessment to be completed in 2004, and assessments undertaken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2005 and beyond.

NOAA's activities undertaken as part of the interagency SEARCH program will address a series of key questions:

• Are the changes seen in recent decades in the Arctic climate system consistent with natural variability, or are such changes at least partially attributable to human activity?
• What are the mechanisms by which the Arctic climate system has changed in recent decades?
• What is the interplay among atmospheric circulation, ozone loss, and UV radiation?
• Can climate changes in the Arctic be predicted or assigned a probability?
• How will marine ecosystems be affected by anticipated climate variability or change?
• How will seasonal weather patterns in the Arctic and mid-latitudes be affected by changes in the Arctic?
• How will hemispheric and global climate be affected by changes in the Arctic?

Bering Sea Ecosystem Science

The Bering Sea ecosystem is among the most productive of high latitude seas.² It is a rich, abundant, and ecologically diverse system that has attracted and supported aboriginal cultures across millennia, and now supports the largest set of commercial fisheries in the U.S. The ecosystems of the Bering Sea region are shaped by a number of oceanographic, geophysical, biochemical, economic, and cultural forces. Over the last two decades changes in Bering Sea resources have been profound. Steller sea lions declined 50 to 80 percent and are now listed as "endangered". Northern fur seals are listed as "depleted" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Bering Sea populations of common murres, thick-billed murres, and red and black-legged kittiwakes declined up to 90 percent. In 1999 the collapse of the salmon fishery in Bristol Bay led the State of Alaska to declare the region an economic disaster.

Concurrent with biotic declines, there are significant changes in the oceanographic and atmospheric Arctic environment. Observations and historical analysis over the last six years show that the Bering Sea ecosystem experiences large inter-annual and decadal scale variability. Recent observations point to the influence of hemispheric physical processes on Bering Sea resources, explaining, many believe, the observed biotic declines. One example is the establishment of coccolithophores at the base of the food chain after the warming event in 1997. However, observed changes in biota have also been linked with a long history of natural resource exploitation spanning two centuries, but which has increased dramatically within the last few decades. There is rising evidence of increased loadings of pollutants being transported to and sequestered in Arctic oceanic, atmospheric, and terrestrial environments, and in biota. Alteration of the ocean floor from industrial-scale fishing and change in terrestrial habitats caused by development activities have also occurred during the period of biotic declines, and cannot be excluded as factors in these declines. This suite of natural change and human influences are likely altering the biocomplexity of the Bering Sea in ways not yet understood. Quantifying the relative importance of natural and human-induced variations in explaining upper trophic level ecosystem change is a key management issue for the Bering Sea.

As part of a developing interagency effort on Bering Sea Ecosystem Science, NOAA will undertake research that focuses on the following key questions:

• What environmental processes and factors control the productivity of Arctic/Bering Sea ecosystems?
• What environmental or anthropogenic factors may cause a shift in productivity away from commercial or other valued species?
• Can marine ecosystem productivity be predicted well enough to provide guidance to environmental managers and living resource users?

U.S. Arctic Contaminants Program

The Arctic is not as pristine as it looks.³ Contaminants are appearing in Alaska's air and water, and collecting in Alaska's fish and wildlife, including the same species used by Native people as essential parts of their subsistence diet. The concerns by local people for their health and cultural connection are significant. Yet this is not just a local problem, it concerns us all. The unanticipated concentrations of pollutants in the Arctic are derived to a very large degree from contamination being transported around the Northern Hemisphere and accumulating in the Arctic. The increasing levels of environmental pollutants in Alaska require attention because:

• most of these contaminants do not originate in the Arctic and cannot be dealt with through local action there;
• the ecosystems of the Arctic frequently terminate with a large number of lipid-rich tertiary carnivores, which comprise a high proportion of the human diet, and;
• Arctic residents, particularly those with a subsistence culture, may suffer serious health effects.

Contaminants of most concern are the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and heavy metals. POPs such as DDT, PCB's and dioxins are persistent, have a broad range of deleterious effects, and are clearly accumulating in the Arctic. This is surprising because POPs are not manufactured in the Arctic and were infrequently used in the region with the exception of some World War II and cold war military operations. In fact, many of these man-made chemicals have been banned for many years in the US, Canada, and several European nations. POPs may travel long distances from remote areas including Russia, Asia and North and South America, particularly from countries where these substances are still used.

Heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic, and cadmium are also of concern. While heavy metals exist in the natural environment, concentrations at some locations in the Arctic are too high to have come from natural releases. Although some heavy metals are essential micronutrients, others are naturally highly toxic. All metals have serious deleterious effects at higher concentrations.

Wildlife in the Arctic are being impacted. Eagles, sea otters and Steller sea lions in the Aleutian Islands have elevated levels of the pesticide DDT. High levels of hexachlorocyclphexane (HCH), another pesticide, are being found in male polar bears from Alaska. Sea ducks, walrus and caribou have high levels of cadmium. Killer whales in the North Pacific are now considered the most contaminated mammals on earth.

It is not surprising that people in the Arctic are showing similar trends. Studies in Canada have shown that PCB concentrations in the blood of adult Native Inuit people are seven times higher than adult populations in North America from more southern regions. Preliminary studies of Natives in western and southwestern regions of Alaska demonstrate that these populations have potentially significant exposures to PCBs and DDT.

NOAA will join with the State of Alaska, tribal organizations, and other Federal agencies to play a specific role in a broad study of Arctic contaminants, and will address the following questions related to NOAA's core mission:

• What are the contaminant loadings in the Arctic from long-range transport and deposition, and what are the regional sources of these contaminants?
• What chemical transformations take place in the Arctic atmosphere and what is the ultimate fate of "Arctic haze"?
• Is the productivity of commercial or valued marine species at risk from contaminants in the marine environment; are human consumers of marine species at risk from contaminants in the marine living resources?

1. Text adapted from the SEARCH Science Plan, developed by the SEARCH Science Steering Committee. Return
2. Text adapted from an interagency implementation plan for the "Response of Ecosystems of the Bering Sea Region to Environmental Change". Return
3.Text adapted from a multi-agency issue paper "Contaminants in Alaska: Is America's Arctic at Risk?" Return