Breakout Session 5: Terrestrial
Question 1.
Feedbacks- only an arctic system model can help answer issues related to feedbacks
-Changes in snow patchiness, snow season length, vegetation etc.
-Permafrost
-Lakes, wetlands & links to C cycle
-Rivers – export and interactions with the ocean (temperature, nutrients, and sediments)
-Glaciers (dynamics) and ice sheets- not much now and difficult to validate
-Geomorphological processes and effect on albedo/snow/ice etc.
-What timescale?
-Paleoclimatic realizations (use the model to understand past changes in the system)
-Resolution of 40 km or better
Questions 2 & 3.
-Model validation: need for a stronger land focus and potentially use paleo data for validation
-Remote sensing: satellite snowfall (?), soil moisture in the future, altimetry for lakes, passive/active
microwave for snow
-Target certain areas for validation?
-What happens at the end of IPY?
-Theoretically, an ASM can help us determine which observational sites are important for continued
monitoring
-Satellite data good for snow extent, and maybe freeze and thaw and major vegetation shifts, but not
much else. So, the in situ focus is important.
-No validation data for snow distribution in complex terrain
-Digital elevation model data (topography)
Question 4.
-Missing validation data in general
lQuestion 5.
-We are missing the interaction between the land and the ocean, including coastal processes, and
thermal processes associated with the rivers
-Change in the vegetation (dispersal paramters are unknown) /albedo
-Change in the aquatic terrestrial / biogeochemical (esp. carbon) / physical processes
-Waves and tides as they pertain to the coast & coastal erosion
-Fauna (e.g., polar bears, migration patterns of caribou)
- Thinking beyond climate: Pollutants and emissions etc.
-Initial state of the various components of the system
-Very fine scale heterogenity and discrete problems- how to model this?
Question 6.
-Pathways for full interaction of humans versus loosely coupled?
-Humans not a highly significant agent to the system (compared to other parts of the world), except for
fires, damming, some infrastructre (pipelines)
-The international politics of change in the Arctic
-Humans as users would benefit from an ASM for infrastrucure, engineering, shipping, subsistence
lifestyle, land management etc.
-Impact assessment: addition of feedforward diagnostic modules and application to the larger
community
-Existing models: models of native vlllages and sustainability
Question 7.
-To 40 N at least (to capture the approriate drainage basins)