Potential impact of climate change on ecosystems of the Barents Sea Region

Byline: Hedwig Roderfeld (1), Eleanor Blyth (2), Rutger Dankers (3), Geir Huse (4), Dag Slagstad (5), Ingrid Ellingsen (5), Annett Wolf (6), Manfred A. Lange (1) Abstract: The EU project BALANCE (Global Change Vulnerabilities in the Barents region: Linking Arctic Natural Resources, Climate Change and Economies) aims to assess vulnerability to climate change in the Barents Sea Region. As a prerequisite the potential impact of climate change on selected ecosystems of the study area has to be quantified, which is the subject of the present paper. A set of ecosystem models was run to generate baseline and future scenarios for 1990, 2020, 2050 and 2080. The models are based on data from the Regional Climate Model (REMO), driven by a GCM which in turn is forced by the IPCC-B2 scenario. The climate change is documented by means of the Koppen climate classification. Since the multitude of models requires the effect of climate change on individual terrestrial and marine systems to be integrated, the paper concentrates on a standardised visualisation of potential impacts by use of a Geographical Information System for the timeslices 2050 and 2080. The resulting maps show that both terrestrial and marine ecosystems of the Barents region will undergo significant changes until both 2050 and 2080. Author Affiliation: (1) Institute for Geophysics, University of Munster, Corrensstrasse 24, 48149, Munster, Germany (2) Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, OX10 8BB, UK (3) Institute for Environment and Sustainability, JRC European Commission, 21020, Ispra, (VA), Italy (4) Institute of Marine Research, P.O. Box 1870, Nordnes, 5817, Bergen, Norway (5) SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture, 465, Trondheim, Norway (6) Forest Ecology, Universitatstrasse 16, ETH-Zentrum, CHN, G 77, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland Article History: Registration Date: 05/10/2007 Received Date: 06/07/2006 Accepted Date: 03/10/2007 Online Date: 29/01/2008