AMAP and the climate data dilemma

For four years, Russian climate data has been nearly impossible to reach. Now the United States is cutting its climate support and stepping back from the IPCC and the UN climate convention. Two of the biggest Arctic states are going dark at the same time, right when we most need to know how fast the climate is shifting.

Serafima Andreeva talks with Rolf Rødven, Executive Secretary of AMAP (the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, a Working Group of the Arctic Council), about what that missing data actually costs. Pull Russian measurements out of the Arctic station network and some climate models fall back by 80 years. 

They cover the three hardest data gaps to close, why satellites cannot simply fill them, and why indigenous and traditional knowledge belongs next to the science.

Transcript

Serafima Andreeva: Arctic science is in crisis. For the past four years, it has been nearly impossible to access climate data from Russia, and now the United States is cutting all climate support and removing it from the agenda. How can we know how hard the climate crisis will hit us if we don't have data that can explain it? This is the Circumpolar Podcast.
Serafima Andreeva: My name is Serafima Andreva, and I'm your host.
Serafima: So to talk about these challenges today, we have an expert guest with us, Rolf Rødven, executive secretary of AMAP, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program Working Group in the Arctic Council. You've also had this long experience with the Arctic Council in general, how has your experience been with the internal processes in the Arctic Council after 2022?
Rolf: Thank you, Serafima. Thank you for the question. As you said, I started up before, already in 2018, so I saw the Council before the change and after the change. Of course, 2022 came with a lot of quite strict restrictions in the beginning on the collaboration within the Arctic Council, first with a full pause in all our activities and then with a partial resumption and then later what we call a full resumption, but where we still do not meet at the working group and the senior article official levels. So, it has been a major change in the way we work or the way we collaborate from before 2022, where we both are experts and we have about 900 of them met as well as the heads of delegates and everyone. And where we came together, discussed.
Rolf: What are those most relevant policy questions we need to answer when it comes to pollutants, when it comes to climate change? What is the science or the knowledge we have to answer those questions? What knowledge do we need to develop to be able to do so? And we do see that those processes are much more difficult now. We are progressing our work, but it's still challenging. At the same time, monolithic issues are more important than ever. There's no, as you said, there's no place warming up as fast as the Arctic. There's no place we see the changes fast and we know that the Arctic, in terms of impacts, expands way beyond its geographical borders. It impacts the rest of the world.
Serafima: One thing you mentioned that the Arctic is expanding, mean the effects coming in the Arctic and from the Arctic they are expanding far beyond the Arctic as well. And to understand which effects are in the Arctic we need information and access to the entire Arctic and this includes half of the Arctic which is Russia. Russia has been a difficult question in these kinds of situations and also partly because of the participation from people and from data. So what have been the challenges when it comes to accessing data? Have been the challenges when it comes to talking to the researchers sitting in Russia in the Arctic Council or in AMAP?
Rolf: Just to start with what you said, like how the Arctic is impacting the rest of the world. We sometimes under communicate how immense those impacts are. The Arctic has already contributed to a sea level rise of four centimeters. So it's more than twice what you see as contributions from Antarctica, for instance. And four centimeters, how much is that actually? Well, if you instead of spreading that all throughout the world, if you took all that water and put it into Europe. You would kind of drown every European on the European part of the continent. You would have a wall of water being two meters high. That would be the same for two-thirds of the US, for instance, or the whole of Australia. So it's an immense amount of water that had already melted from glaciers in the Arctic.
Rolf: Similar when it comes to permafrost thaw and most of the permafrost is located in Russia about more than 60 percent of Russia is on permafrost and the carbon storage stored there if you see the warming rates continuing as they are now and the increase in emissions from permafrost by there are experts that have claimed that by year 2100 the emissions from permafrost in the Arctic will be more or less the same as we see from major states today like China or the US in emissions. So it can really have an impact and to be able to understand our carbon budget and see what we need to do, we really need to understand what's going on. Of course, to do that, that's what has been AMAP's strength always, is to bring in the pan-Arctic data to understand what goes on in all of the Arctic, not just the European sector or the American sector or Russian sector, but the whole of it, because there's a lot of diversity there. And we do see that to grasp that diversity is really important. Like, for instance, experts have shown that if you remove Russian data from the interact stations, which is a research network, if you remove the Russian data for some of the parameters like humidity, you offset models by 80 years. So 80 years, that means that we would discuss, we would describe climate change today as it was in the 1950s. So that's the impact we're talking about here. So of course, you need to really bring in all of the data from the Arctic. And given the policy, it has given much more restrictions on exchange of researchers, but also exchange of data. We do see still contributions through, for instance, WMO on the weather. But on climate data, it's much less exchange at the moment.
Rolf: I should say that Russia has been very constructive since we've resumed the work in offering data and trying to open up, but still we need to operationalize this and see how it's going. So it's really something we would need not only from AMAP's side, but globally to understand one of the major drivers of the warming as we see it now.
Serafima: Now we've been talking about only Russia, but the data issue, also counts for another key Arctic state, you could say, and that's the United States, which has been completely disregarding, climate, environment, and indigenous and all of these kinds of issues.
Serafima: In January the US left the IPCC and the UN climate convention.
Serafima: So which climate data comes actually from the United States and what happens to AMAP now with current restrictions coming from the United States?
Rolf: Well, it's not in my mind to talk about political change, but what we see when it comes to how the new policies are affecting data harvesting and data exchange, does impact both AMF but also as you say IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, WHO or World Health Organization and so on. And the US has been a main provider of data, for instance from satellite monitoring of sea ice and other vegetational change, hydrological changes and so on. They've really been one of the most important providers to IPCC to Dolby Mo and so on. Of course, when you restrict the shutdowns of those data streams, it does have impacts on the way we assess both weather but also climate.
Rolf: It's not so easy to replace them. Even satellite observations need calibration. So it's not something you can just flick on a switch and then, for instance, European satellites take over or something. It takes much longer time to calibrate. So it will of course affect the way we do that we are able to address the change going on.
Rolf: Both when it comes to climate, maybe more importantly on a short term, in terms of weather and some of the extreme weather events we see. There's been an increase in the frequency of extreme events like storms and floods and so on. So it does have societal implications when you do not monitor weather and climate parameters as we did.
Serafima: Especially with the super El Nino effect right now. I mean, these kind of are the greatest examples for this. My questions for you then is, so, okay, there is less satellite monitoring access to United States data, if I understand this correctly. So, less remote sensing and to access data from Russia, there are many or certain measurements from Russia. A lot is attempted, at least compensated through remote sensing. Is this like a future possible problem where there is less access to the remote sensing technology from the United States and less remote and then also not that much possibility to sense in Russia? Do you get the, is this a problem that you can see evolving?
Rolf: I mean, there is, of course, the restrictions seen data flows, not only from remote sensing of satellites, but also when it comes to ground-based data, you are both for the ground-based data in itself, but also for ground-through satellite data. So you need to calibrate them. That does have issues. What is positive is what we see now on the very rapid development, technological development on sensors in satellites. So now you're able to detect thermal differences.
Rolf: To be in a stage where you can do a better monitoring of methane, for instance, or those short-lived climate forces. We are not there where we can compensate for ground measurements, but we're getting there. And together with artificial intelligence, together with autonomous measurements and so on, of course, we are getting a completely different input of data. But still, the spatial diversity, special variation is still there. So you're able to fully compensate. You can partly compensate, but of course it does not solve the gaps we have in data. And particularly when it comes to long-term data sets, when you shut down long-term data sets, it leaves a gap in the data. It leaves a gap in our standing, of course, that also leaves gaps in our assessments and all what's going on.
Serafima: These data problems they are talked about at like conferences and papers etc but they're never mentioned specifically what data is the biggest problem or what would you say if you could say top three from a map or Arctic Council perspective then what are the top three problematic data areas explain like I'm five.
Rolf: One I would say permafrost thought not only permafrost itself but we need to understand we need an integrated system and we've been working together with different research groups to develop this on to understand both what's going on in the soil to understand what's going on in the vegetation because methane for instance can be broken down to other compounds through the vegetation also to how the atmospheric has changed there so you need an integrated system where you measure the vertical column from the soil to the atmosphere.
Rolf: And we're also in the atmosphere understand the forcing, radiative forcing of these aerosols or methane and so on. And you need to do that, you need to have that monitoring in a way that is representative. So we need to sample different places throughout the Arctic to make sure that you give the right picture given the spatial variation you have in vegetation and so on. That is a big challenge, but that's also a very important contributor to the carbon budget.
Rolf: The other thing I would say is the oceans, the ocean currents. We all heard about AMOC and the circulatory systems of ocean currents and how they rapidly can change. Those are very hard to model, both in terms of the lack of data, the lack of long-term data we have, the lack of the monitoring systems that are placed out there and the cost of managing them.
Rolf: But also in terms of the complexities here, because it's not all about the currencies, but freshwater meltdowns from glaciers and sea ice and all those complex mechanisms that are kind of put together, which you really need to tease apart to be able to understand.
Rolf: The third one I would say is to understand interactions between sea ice and land, oceans and land and glaciers. How are these dynamics, how is the warming molded by the change in the environment? That could either be by the physical environment, by sea ice and glaciers, but also what is maybe more important is the ecological environment will a more active ecosystem in terms of more green plants, will that be able to take up the CO2 and dampen the warming? Or will, for instance, thickets sticking through the snow, reducing the albedo and increase the warming? And to be able to quantify that will be really what sets our understanding of how will the Arctic develop within the next 20, 15 and 100 years and how much of the warming taking part in the Arctic will impact the rest of the world.
Serafima: There's a colossal change coming. But if we zoom a little bit out from the technical data aspect of knowledge in and about the Arctic and go a little bit more to the traditional and lived and practical knowledge So AMAP has been working together with the permanent participants, with the indigenous groups.
Serafima: Of the Arctic Council or involved in the Arctic Council work and not all of the Arctic Council. How has that been? You could say lately what the Arctic Council has been in this vulnerable state.
Rolf: I would say first, I mean we've been doing this for many years since the very beginning, the permanent participants of indigenous peoples' organizations have been a very important part of the work of AMAP and all the work groups in Arctic Council and Arctic Council itself. And one major milestone when it comes to bringing in indigenous knowledge was the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment delivered by AMAP CAF and IASC in 2004-2005, which really brought indigenous knowledge and local and traditional knowledge into together with science to understand the changes going on, how they impact ecosystems and societies and still we do so. So one of the reports we are working on now is societal implications of climate change where we do have a co-lead from one of the permanent participants and where indigenous knowledge is very important part of that.
Rolf: Of course, given the restrictions we see now, this also affects the collaboration we have had with the permanent participants. Of course, also with Russia and the Russian Arctic Indigenous People's Organizations. So it does affect our understanding, particularly on how the change impacts peoples and societies and the livelihoods and health and economy and so on. So that is really an area we would like to see even more collaboration, even more cooperation on. Particularly because, I mean, Russia is, as you said, it has the major part of the Arctic when it comes to the continents. But also it's still the era where we have most people living up further north in remote locations. It gives us different types of understanding than we have, for instance, from Finland to Norway, which is much more urbanized, much more, you have much more proximity to larger cities and so on.
Serafima: But if we look at, let's say you are looking over an AMAP report where you have knowledge from scientists and from, let's say, the Sámi Council or has played in something. How does this knowledge go together? Like in practice, how do you work with this?
Rolf: I wish I could give you the ideal answer. That's something we work on every day to develop. Right now we are reviewing our guidelines when it comes to engagements of indigenous knowledge and see how we can bring this together. Because it is not easy. It's different cultures. And then you need to bring them together and kind of find a way to meet standards we set for both of science but also for indigenous knowledge on how to validate the knowledge, how to communicate knowledge, how to respect the integrity of the knowledge in a good way. And that is the process of its own and we don't have an exact answer but what we've seen which has really helped us in this process is when we have people particularly like indigenous youth or indigenous peoples that do have, you know, one foot in back, both camps with kind of a scientific background and an indigenous background that kind of translate the science in between those two groups, both when it comes to bringing in the science, but also when communicating the results back and also to communicate in between researchers and indigenous knowledge holders on how to bring this forward in the best way in the most equitable way. Because it is about, for us it's about bringing in all of the best knowledge to understand what we really need to understand. And I grew up in a very, not the most part of Norway. I'm Sami. And the first things I learned about climate change was from my grandfather and not from school books. And you know that these two ways of gathering knowledge, they work in different ways, but they can really complement each other to bring in a full picture of what's going on.
Serafima: Holistic problem solving as a way to address some of the major issues we're meeting. I mean, before we move on to the policy recommendation, I want to ask you, what would you like to see more of in AMAP for the future?
Rolf: What we are working on is, well, first and foremost, we will continue to work as we do. The scientific assessments we do, the monitoring work we do is kind of the backbone of every work we do. And it kind of gives us the integrity and the messages which you need to bring your knowledge into different conventional work and also to national policy making. And also just for it to be for better for the Arctic communities as such. Then of course what we need to understand better is the interactions between different processes in the Arctic ecosystem to understand how climate not only alter glaciers or sea ice, but how does that affect, for instance, new diseases in the Arctic? How does it affect societies? How does it ecosystems and so on?
Rolf: So that is kind of the new, what we need to see when it comes to more the knowledge we work with. But then when it comes to the way we work with it, it's also about, you know, engaging youth, youth that will need to adopt, adapt to these challenges. And I mean, we all, to give them the best knowledge and best ways to work with communication is very important for us.
Rolf: And of course, it's always, you know, never be satisfied or content with what you do. Always try to improve your methodology, improve the way you communicate, improve the way you your outreach, and also bring in the best of all systems to address what is so important for Arctic to address.
Serafima: Being 100% content is a slippery slope to stagnation. Is that kind of what you're aiming at? So we should never be content. Always being hungry.
Rolf: It's about always being hungry. Always being hungry.
Serafima: That's a great idea, a great thing to be. But let's say then you are responsible for everything, not only Arctic Council related, let's say you are responsible for everything Arctic cooperation related for, let's say all of the Nordics, all of the Nordic States. You have all the power.
Serafima: That you want with all of and all of the money that you need to do only one thing. To get one like, let's say policy recommendation executed. Which recommendation is it? What do you do? What do you suggest?
Rolf: If it's of any kind, I would take the number one recommendation from the last climate assessment on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and find ways of dealing with that. And at the same time, build up frameworks for adaptations for the change that will come, regardless of how quickly we are able to implement reductions.
Rolf: I think that would be the one thing.
Serafima: Mitigation and adaptation quickly as possible. Ideally yesterday to those listening. No, Rolf, it's been fantastic to have you. Thank you for being a guest. And thank you for listening.
Rolf: Adaptation.
Rolf: Always a pleasure Serafima, it's always a pleasure.