Abstract
The IPCC special report on the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate (SROCC) highlights with high confidence that declining Arctic sea ice extents and increased ship-based transportation are impacting the livelihoods of Arctic Indigenous peoples. Current IPCC assessments cannot address the local scale impacts and adaptive needs of Arctic Indigenous communities based on the global, top-down model approaches used. Inuit maintain the longest unrecorded climate history of sea ice in Canada, and to support Inuit community needs, a decolonized, Inuit knowledge-based approach was co-developed in the community of Mittimatalik, Nunavut (Canada) to create the Mittimatalik siku asijjipallianinga (sea ice climate atlas) 1997–2019. This paper presents the novel approach used to develop the atlas based on Inuit knowledge, earth observations and Canadian Ice Service (CIS) sea ice charts, and demonstrates its application. The atlas provides an adaptation tool that Mittimatalik can use to share locations of known and changing sea ice conditions to plan for safe sea ice travel. These maps can also be used to support the safety and situational awareness of territorial and national search and rescue partners, often coming from outside the region and having limited knowledge of local sea ice conditions. The atlas demonstrates the scientific merit of Inuit knowledge in environmental assessments for negotiating a proposal to extend the shipping seasons for the nearby Mary River Mine. The timing and rates of sea ice freeze-up (October–December) in Mittimatalik are highly variable. There were no significant trends to indicate that sea ice is freezing up later to support increased shipping opportunities into the fall. The atlas shows that the first 2 weeks of November are critical for landfast ice formation, and icebreaking at this time would compromise the integrity of the sea ice for safe travel, wildlife migration and reproduction into the winter months. There was evidence that sea ice break-up (May–July) and the fracturing of the nearby floe edge have been occurring earlier in the last 10 years (2010–2019). Shipping earlier into the break-up season could accelerate the break-up of an already declining sea ice travel season, that Inuit are struggling to maintain.
Highlights
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) outlines that between 1979 and 2018, sea ice in the Arctic decreased by ∼13% per decade (IPCC, 2019, p. 6)
Freeze-up, October 22 to Dec 20, (1997–2019): 1) Ten weekly average tuvaq maps (e.g., Figure 5) 2) Summary graph of average tuvaq formation by week (Figure 6) 3) Summary graph showing the weekly variability in tuvaq formation (Figure 7A) 4) Summary graph illustrating the weekly frequency of tuvaq formation (Figure 7B) 5) Twenty-three maps showing the spatial formation of tuvaq for each year (e.g., Figure 8) 6) Six weekly difference maps showing areas where tuvaq is forming earlier or later in the last 10 years (e.g., Figure 9)
For the week of November 5–11, there is an average of 38% tuvaq in the region with initial areas of tuvaq forming in the southern inlets and sounds; the sea ice is not normally safe for community travel (Figure 5A)
Summary
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) outlines that between 1979 and 2018, sea ice in the Arctic decreased by ∼13% per decade (IPCC, 2019, p. 6). In the Canadian Arctic there has been a three-fold increase in the distance traveled by ships between 1990 and 2015 (Pizzolato et al, 2014, 2016; Dawson et al, 2018) This exposes Indigenous coastal communities to a higher risk of accidents, pollution, noise, invasive species, and disruptions to subsistence hunting areas, wildlife reproduction, populations, and migration routes (Huntington et al, 2015; ICC-Alaska, 2015; Meredith et al, 2019). In this background section we briefly review the impacts of climate change and colonialism on safe sea ice travel across Inuit Nunangat. In this paper we use the Mittimatalik Inuktitut sea ice and geographic terms and Table 1 has been provided for reference to the equivalent English terms while reading.
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