Assessing the impact of observation networks and data mobility for their impacts on socio-economical activities in the Arctic – Perspectives by the iCUPE project

Rapid changes due to climate warming in the Arctic environment call for action and the implementation of sustainable measures in a scientific data driven policy process.

 

Assessment of available data on the Arctic and Antarctic regions and their linkage to Essential Variables (EV) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) allow the implementation of scientific data driven policies and socio-economic activities mechanisms towards sustainable development. In the iCUPE (Integrative and Comprehensive Understanding on Polar Environments; www.atm.helsinki.fi/icupe) project (Petäjä et al., 2020), multiscale datasets ranging from in-situ small local scale to remotes sensing satellite data operating on global scale were generated and made public.

iCUPE developed further several data pilot applications that included flow of different data sources towards public services. Inclusion of indigenous knowledge and feedback by data users were tested (Noe et al., 2021)

 

The iCUPE datasets were used to evaluate impacts on social-economical activities in the Arctic and are well-linked to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as #3, 4, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 17. In particular, DSs (on aerosols, including black carbon, physico-chemical properties and spatio-temporal variability based on ground-based, satellite and unmanned aerial systems observations) show links to atmospheric pollution and climate change. These DSs allow to evaluate impact on environment and population (especially, indigenous people) health for the Arctic States as well as long-range transport/ deposition of pollution to remote populated regions. Hence, the evaluation results will be useful for the climate adaptation and changing social lifestyle and economic activities in Arctic regions. The DSs (on atmospheric mercury observations) show links to atmospheric pollution and deposition on underlying surfaces, and hence, the contamination of seas/lands. This helps to estimate impact on fishery and reindeer herding economical activities, and hence, impact on environment and population health through food chains. The DSs (emerging organic contaminants in water) show a situation on contamination of seas, which is important for evaluating the impacts on fishery industry, and hence, impact on population health and well-being through food chains and prosperity. The DSs (on emerging organic and anthropogenic contaminants in snow) underline contamination of food supply for reindeers, which is valuable for evaluating impact on economic activities and style of the life of indigenous people as well as impact on population health through food chains. The DSs (time series of lake size changes in Northeast Greenland) show changes in water resources availability, which can influence the hydropower plans of the Greenlandic government to foster economic development in Greenland.

 

 

Petaja, T., et al. (2020): Overview: Integrative and Comprehensive Understanding on Polar Environments (iCUPE) - concept and initial results. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 20, 14, p. 8551-8592.

Noe S.M. et al. (2021): Arctic observations and Sustainable Development Goals - Contributions and examples from ERA-PLANET iCUPE data. Environmental Science and Policy, Manuscript in Review.