AMAP’s Arctic Climate Change Update reports

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) publishes Arctic Climate Change Updates on a biennial basis, the previous being 2024 and a new report due in 2026. AMAP is a scientific working group under the Arctic Council, and its climate update reports provide up-to-date information and knowledge of relevance. This is particularly important for the Arctic where the warming is extremely rapid and changes are coming fast. The Arctic and the polar regions have important roles for both the Earth’s climate as well as societies across the world, being the most important region with ice and a frozen state. For instance, melting ice caps on Greenland affects the global sea level and threatens to submerge coastal cities. The reports include policy-relevant and society-relevant material, and are written partly with policy-makers in mind, and they may be easier to digest than e.g. the assessment reports from the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). These reports will also be an important contribution to monitoring the state of the climate, since the next IPCC assessment report will not have a separate chapter on the polar regions. The AMAP updates, however, may serve as a contribution to the  state of the Arctic. These reports will also be relevant for the Arctic Council's nature working groups with the Assessment of Societal Implications of Climate Change in the Arctic (SICCA) and the Conservation of the Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF). While some aspects can be presented with minor uncertainty, such as past evolutions and the current state, others, such as the exact thresholds for tipping points, are clouded with unknowns. The chapters in the reports touch upon different topics with expertise from different disciplines, and one challenge is to communicate science across sectors with different norms for dealing with knowledge and information.