Arctic climate change update 2021: key trends and impacts. Summary for policy-makers

This Summary for Policy-makers is an overview of key findings in the AMAP Arctic Climate Change Update 2021: Key Trends and Impacts. Summary for Policy-makers report, which provides updates on key issues and changes since the Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA) 2017 assessment and the Arctic Climate Change Update 2019 report. The report summarizes the latest findings on extreme events; connections between Arctic change and midlatitude weather; ecosystem-climate connections, including impacts and feedbacks; and observed (and in some cases projected) societal impacts of Arctic climate change. The report also provides updated projections of Arctic climate change from the next generation of climate models and scenarios that will be evaluated as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. 

The report provides six key findings regarding climate change in the Arctic, including:

1. The physical drivers of Arctic change continue to change rapidly;
2. extreme events in the Arctic are changing in frequency and intensity;
3. climate change is having major impacts on Arctic communities;
4. arctic ecosystems are experiencing rapid, transformational changes;
5. changes in the Arctic have global consequences; and
6. the latest climate models continue to project that the Arctic will warm rapidly over the course of this century.