Agriculture is a mainstay of Central Asia’s economy. With the economic crisis following independence it has become even more important. Agriculture being almost entirely dependent upon irrigation, access to water is of strategic importance. Two major Tributaries – The Naryn and the Kara-Darya – both originating in Kyrgyzstan, join to form the Syr-Darya, one of the two largest rivers serving the Aral Sea Basin, and the key water resource of the wh...

The Arctic is extremely diverse in terms of landscapes, varying from pack and drift ice to rugged shores, flat coastal plains, rolling hills and mountains surpassing 6000 metres above sea level (Denali, 6,194 m asl, in sub-arctic and boreal Alaska). The region has rivers and lakes, tundra and the largest forests in the world (the Russian Taiga). This is a simple grayscale political map.

The averages of the scenarios in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) are presented in this figure, for the year 2090, with the surface temperatures over land, the size of the polar ice cap, and the outer limits of permafrost. This map features shipping routes in addition - as the sea ice is decreasing, the potential for developing shipping in the Arctic increases.

Areas that are vulnerable to pollution from oil and chemical spills where identified using a multiple index in a geographical analysis. Factors, including shoreline sensitivity, corals, benthic conditions, sea birds, marine mammals, fish and fisheries and other sea resources where taken into account and weighed for their importance.

Proposal from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) for permanent petroleum-free zones in the Barents Sea. Areas covered with ice for parts of the year are also included in the proposed zones. The map has been drawn up by WWF Norway and is based on vulnerability analyses from Det Norske Veritas (April 2005) and mapping of fish resources from the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (March 2005).

The Arctic has been opened up for increased exploration of petroleum, gas and mining activities. The Barents Sea, the Mackenzie Valley in Canada and the Alaskan North Slope, are the areas of chief interest at the moment. With increased temperatures and climate change, it is expected that the commercial intrest for more extraction and exploration will increase, as well as shipping of the products. As sea ice decreases, the shipping lanes will beco...

The figure shows rates at which the ice-sheet mass was estimated to be changing based on radar-altimeter data (black), mass-budget calculations (red), and satellite gravity measurements (blue). Rectangles depict the time periods of observations (horizontal) and the upper and lower estimates of mass balance (vertical). Measurements by satellite techniques based on gravity indicate mass loss at a rate of 138 ± 73 billion tonnes per year during 200...

Mountain permafrost in Central Asia occupies approximately 3.5 million square kilometers and makes up about 15 per cent of the total permafrost area in the Northern Hemisphere. The climatic variations during the 20th century and especially during the last two decades have impacted current permafrost temperatures. In the Tien Shan Mountains, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and western Mongolian sector of the Altai Mountains, observations over the last 30 ...

Climate models project that summer sea ice in the Arctic Basin will retreat further and further away from most Arctic landmasses, opening new shipping routes and extending the navigation season in the Northern Sea Route by between two and four months. Previously frozen areas in the Arctic may therefore become seasonally or permanently navigable, increasing the prospects for marine transport through the Arctic and providing greater access to Arcti...

Coastal and island tide-gauge data show that sea level rose by just under 20 cm between 1870 and 2001, with an average rise of 1.7 mm per year during the 20th century and with an increase in the rate of rise over this period. This is consistent with the geological data and the few long records of sea level from coastal tide gauges. From 1993 to the end of 2006, near-global measurements of sea level (between 65°N and 65°S) made by high precision s...

The projected range of global averaged sea-level rise from the IPCC 2001 Assessment Report for the period 1990 to 2100 is shown by the lines and shading. The updated AR4 IPCC projections made are shown by the bars plotted at 2095, the dark blue bar is the range of model projections (90% confidence limits) and the light blue bar has the upper range extended to allow for the potential but poorly quantified additional contribution from a dynamic res...

The water resources of small islands and low-lying coastal areas are very susceptible to sea-level rise. This figure illustrates the direct impacts on the water resources sector, as well as the plethora of higher-order impacts which affect not only that sector but most, if not all, other sectors including health, transport and agriculture.

The red line indicates the median minimum extent of the ice cover for the period 1979–2000. This figure compares the Arctic sea-ice extent in September for the years 1982 (the record maximum since 1979) and 2005 (the record minimum). The ice extent was 7.5 million km2 in 1982 and only 5.6 million km2 in 2005, a difference of 25 per cent. As has been observed in other recent years, the retreat of the ice cover was particularly pronounced along the...

Seasonal variation in the extent of ice and snow cover is greatest in the Northern Hemisphere. Imagine the Earth with white caps on the top and bottom. The top cap increases by a factor of six from summer to winter, while the bottom cap only doubles from summer to winter. This difference is due to snow cover: in the Northern Hemisphere snow cover on land varies from less than 2 million km2 in the summer to 40 to 50 million km2 in the winter3. The...

Even for today’s socio-economic conditions, both regionally and globally, large numbers of people and significant economic activity are exposed to sea-level rise. The densely populated megadeltas are especially vulnerable to sea-level rise. More than 1 million people living in the Ganges- Brahmaputra, Mekong and Nile deltas will be directly affected simply if current rates of sea-level rise continue to 2050 and there is no adaptation. More than 5...

For the Northern Hemisphere (primarily the Arctic), observations using remote sensing technologies have been used to measure the extent and the to assess the development. Despite considerable year-to-year variability, significant negative trends are apparent in both maximum and minimum ice extents, with a rate of decrease of -2.9% per decade for March and -10.5% per decade for September (linear least squares reqression). The differences in extent...

Antarctic is the fifth largest continent of the world at 14 million square kilometres and is covered by a permanent continental ice sheet. The ice is distributed in two major ice sheets, the East Antarctic and the West Antarctic, and in addition there are shelf ice, extending over the sea water. Antarctic inland ice ranges in thickness up to 5000 m, with an average thickness of about 2400 m, making Antarctica by far the highest of the continents....

The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is a seasonally ice-covered marine shipping lane along the Russian coasts, from Novaya Zemlya in the west to the Bering Strait in the east. The NSR is administered by the Russian Ministry of Transport and has been open to marine traffic of all nations since 1991. For trans-Arctic voyages, the NSR represents a saving in distance of up to 40 per cent from Northern Europe to northeastern Asia and northwestern North Ameri...

The red line indicates the median minimum extent of the ice cover for the period 1979–2000. This figure compares the Arctic sea ice extent in September for the years 1982 (the record maximum since 1979) and 2008. The ice extent was 7.5 million km2 in 1982 and only 5.6 million km2 in 2005 and down to 4.3 million km2 in 2007. As has been observed in other recent years, the retreat of the ice cover was particularly pronounced along the Eurasian coas...

Many disasters have been recorded from the glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca. The 1962 and 1970 events originating from Glaciar 511 on the Nevados Huascarán, the highest peak of which is at 6768 m above sea level in the Peruvian Andes, were particularly severe. On 10 January 1962, an ice avalanche took place with an estimated starting volume of 10 million m3; the avalanche travelled down 16 km and destroyed the city of Ranrahirca, where 4000 peop...