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. 2017 Feb;46(Suppl 1):3-11.
doi: 10.1007/s13280-016-0861-y.

Hotspots and key periods of Greenland climate change during the past six decades

Jakob Abermann  1 , Birger Hansen  2 , Magnus Lund  3 , Stefan Wacker  4 , Mojtaba Karami  2 , John Cappelen  5
Affiliations

Hotspots and key periods of Greenland climate change during the past six decades

Jakob Abermann et al. Ambio. 2017 Feb.

Abstract

We investigated air temperature and pressure gradients and their trends for the period 1996-2014 in Greenland and compared these to other periods since 1958. Both latitudinal temperature and pressure gradients were strongest during winter. An overall temperature increase up to 0.15 °C year-1 was observed for 1996-2014. The strongest warming happened during February at the West coast (up to 0.6 °C year-1), weaker but consistent and significant warming occurred during summer months (up to 0.3 °C year-1) both in West and East Greenland. Pressure trends on a monthly basis were mainly negative, but largely statistically non-significant. Compared with other time windows in the past six decades, the period 1996-2014 yielded an above-average warming trend. Northeast Greenland and the area around Zackenberg follow the general pattern but are on the lower boundary of observed significant trends in Greenland. We conclude that temperature-driven ecosystem changes as observed in Zackenberg may well be exceeded in other areas of Greenland.

Keywords: Air pressure trends; Ecosystem changes; Greenland climate change; Temperature trends.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Greenland with the Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) used in this study labelled. The full names are given in Table 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Latitudinal gradients of mean monthly air temperature (a, b) and pressure (c, d) for the stations along the West (a, c) and for the East (b, d) coast
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Monthly temperature (a, b) and air pressure trends (c, d) for the weather stations at the West (a, c) and East (b, d) coast, respectively, for the period 1996–2014. Statistically non-significant trends are white
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Time-varying trend for temperature (a–h) and air pressure (i–p) for selected stations that have more than 50 years of data. The x-axis shows the starting year, the y-axis the length of the time period and the colour code the trend for the respective interval in °C year−1 and hPa year−1, respectively
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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