Carbon is the basis of all organic substances, from fossil fuels to human cells. On Earth, carbon is continually on the move – cycling through living things, the land, ocean, atmosphere. What happens when humans start driving the carbon cycle? We have seen that we can make a serious impact – rapidly raising the level of carbon in the atmosphere. But we really have no idea what we are doing. At the moment we don’t even know what happens to all the...

Over the 20th century there has been a consistent, large-scale warming of both the land and ocean surface, with largest increases in temperature over the midand high latitudes of northern continents. This graphic shows the temperature changes across the planet from the years 1976 to 2000, as long-term deviations from the expected mean. The higher temperature increases over land surface - compared to ocean surface - is consistent with the observed...

Multiple stresses make most of Africa highly vulnerable to environmental changes, and climate change is likely to increase this vulnerability. This graphic shows which of the regions of Africa (North Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa and the Western Indian Ocean Islands) are most vulnerable to specific impacts of climate change. These impacts include desertification, sea level rise, reduced freshwater availability,...

Nenets Autonomous Okrug is an administrative region in Arctic Northwest Russia, covering some 176000 sq km of tundra and marshland. The capital city of the region is Narian-Mar. Off the coast are parts of the Arctic ocean know as Barents and Kara seas, and the long island in the north west is Novaya Zemlya.

The Arctic represents the northermost area of the World, the Arctic Ocean and the land areas that surrounds it. The region is characterized but cold temperatures, and ice and snow. The summers are short, but with long periods of daylight (midnight sun). The winters are long and cold and with periods with no sun (polar night). The Arctic Ocean is one basin that is mostly covered by sea ice, and is connected to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The ...

Sea routes along the edges of the Arctic ocean, or rather along the coasts of Northern Canada and Russia, holds potential for decreasing the number of days in shipping goods from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts in Europe and North America, and vice versa. In addition, this could provide a means to transport natural resources, such as oil and gas, extracted in the Arctic. Currently these routes have not been possible to use this, due to the ice con...

For some African countries, particularly in West-Africa and to lesser extent also countries along the Indian Ocean, fisheries contribute significantly to exports. Remarkable is also that the fish sector is important for a landlocked country like Uganda bordering Victoria Lake.

The Barents Sea ecoregion - the part of the World Ocean north of the Nordic countries and Northwest Russia, has a unique environment with major sea bird colonies, rich benthic and plankton fauna and many major sea mammal species. To identify priority areas for conservation, thirty experts delineated sea areas based on ecological criteria in a WWF study. One of the main threats to the region is the development associated with the expansion of foss...

The Barents Sea ecoregion - the part of the World Ocean north of the Nordic countries and Northwest Russia, has a unique environment with major sea bird colonies, rich benthic and plankton fauna and many major sea mammal species. Within this ecoregion, this graphic illustrates the existing coverage of protected areas. One of the main threats to the region is the development associated with the expansion of fossil fuel extraction activities. Russi...

Snow and the various forms of ice - the cryosphere - play different roles within the climate system. The two continental ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland actively influence the global climate over time scales of millennia to millions of years, but may also have more rapid effects on, for example, sea level. Snow and sea ice, with their large areas but relatively small volumes, are connected to key interactions and feedbacks at global scales...

The albedo for different surface conditions on the sea ice range widely, from roughly 85 per cent of radiation reflected for snow-covered ice to 7 per cent for open water. These two surfaces cover the range from the largest to the smallest albedo on earth. Melting snow, bare ice and ponded ice lie within this range. There is a general decrease in the albedo of the ice cover during the melt season as the snow-covered ice is replaced by a mix of me...

The age of sea ice in the Arctic is changing, and not only the extent and concentrations. Studies show that in recent years there is a higher proportion of younger ice to older ice than was observed in the late 1980s. This analysis is based on results from a simulation using drifting buoy data and satellite-derived ice-concentration data. The darker the colour, the older the ice.

The ice cover in Greenland and Antarctica has two components – thick, grounded, inland ice that rests on a more or less solid bed, and thinner floating ice shelves and glacier tongues. An ice sheet is actually a giant glacier, and like most glaciers it is nourished by the continual accumulation of snow on its surface. As successive layers of snow build up, the layers beneath are gradually compressed into solid ice. Snow input is balanced by glaci...

The global conveyor belt thermohaline circulation is driven primarily by the formation and sinking of deep water (from around 1500m to the Antarctic bottom water overlying the bottom of the ocean) in the Norwegian Sea. When the strength of the haline forcing increases due to excess precipitation, runoff, or ice melt the conveyor belt will weaken or even shut down. The variability in the strength of the conveyor belt will lead to climate change in...

In the Arctic, winter sea ice extends over an area of approximately 15 million km2 at its peak in March and up to 7 million km2 in September, at the end of the summer melt season. Corresponding numbers for the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic continent are approximately 3 million km2 in February during the Antarctic summer and 18 million km2 at the height of winter in September. In regions with seasonal sea ice, the ice cover achieves a thickn...

Snow occurs predominantly on the northern continents, on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean and on Antarctica. On the Northern Hemisphere continents, snow covers a maximum mean area of 45.2 million km2, typically in January. The minimum snow-cover extent usually occurs in August and covers a mean area of 1.9 million km2, most of which is snow on the Greenland ice sheet and on mountain glaciers. As a result, snow cover is the surface characteristic r...

Permafrost zones occupy up to 24 per cent of the exposed land area of the Northern Hemisphere. Permafrost is also common within the vast continental shelves of the Arctic Ocean. This subsea permafrost formed during the last glacial period when global sea levels were more than 100 m lower than at present and the shelves were exposed to very harsh climate conditions. Subsea permafrost is slowly thawing at many locations. Permafrost of various tempe...

Mass-balance estimates for Greenland show thickening at high elevations since the early 1990s at rates that increased to about 4 cm per year after 2000, consistent with expectations of increasing snowfall in a warming climate. However, this mass gain is far exceeded by losses associated with large increases in thinning of the ice sheet near the coast. Total loss from the ice sheet more than doubled, from a few tens of billions of tonnes per year ...

Snow and the various forms of ice - the cryosphere - play different roles within the climate system. The two continental ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland actively influence the global climate over time scales of millennia to millions of years, but may also have more rapid effects on, for example, sea level. Snow and sea ice, with their large areas but relatively small volumes, are connected to key interactions and feedbacks at global scales...

The data are taken from climate model experiments of 12 (out of 24) different models that were conducted for the IPCC Assessment Report 4 using the SRES A1B greenhouse gas emission scenario. Plots on the right show changes in late summer and those on the left show changes in late winter. Notes: 1) sea ice extent is the area in which a defined minimum of sea ice can be found. sea ice concentration is the proportion of the ocean area actually cover...