Arctic Prediction in a Changing Climate: Understanding Key Processes and Challenges

The Arctic is the most rapidly warming region on Earth and facing considerable environmental change. These changes are beginning to alter the way humanity uses and exploits the Arctic region with commercial activities, such as tourism, fishing, mineral and oil extraction, and shipping, on the increase. Increased human activity in the Arctic has implications for safety and environmental conservation, and can cause tensions for local communities who rely on subsistence hunting and fishing, and community re-supply.
Environmental prediction for the Arctic therefore is becoming increasingly important but the capability to accurately predict the Arctic atmosphere–sea-ice–ocean system is relatively immature with short-term forecasts significantly less accurate than for the mid-latitudes. Some of the challenges for forecasting systems in the Arctic include: a relatively sparse observing network; some satellite-based observations are hard to use because of the snow and ice-covered surfaces; it is difficult and expensive to make detailed research-quality observations; and the dominant physical processes are different to those at mid-latitudes and the tropics.

To address these issues, the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) was developed as one of the key elements of the WMO’s Polar Prediction Project. Speakers at this meeting will discuss recent advances, and challenges associated with understanding and prediction of key Arctic processes using numerical models and observations. This will include new insights provided by several field campaigns and modelling experiments carried out under the YOPP umbrella.