Climate change affects many aspects of the environment, including weather patterns and the frequencies of various weather events and phenomena. Inuit hunters and elders in Clyde River, Nunavut, have already observed changes in wind patterns and other weather features and have concerns about other potential changes in the future. Evaluating the nature and significance of these meteorological changes requires a multi-pronged, interdisciplinary approach that merges local knowledge and observations with physically based, high-resolution (local, human-relevant scales, like 100-m), downscaling/modeling of larger-scale regional and global climate changes.
This project has three objectives: (1) to document Inuit observations and understanding of meteorological change; (2) to develop numerical models and analytical tools based on meteorological and climatological data that work at the same scales and on the same parameters as Inuit observations, and; (3) to connect the results of the first two objectives, working collaboratively with Inuit to explore the practical and scientific implications of our findings for the future.
The research team's approach has four components, which are carried out through four stages of the project. The components are (a) documenting Inuit observations and other local information, (b) gathering meteorological data, (c) modeling weather and related phenomena on fine spatial (e.g., 100-m) and temporal (e.g., hourly) scales, and (d) integrating the first three components.
The project will connect numerical models with Inuit knowledge and observations to evaluate the nature of meteorological change and to project likely changes in the coming decades at scales, and for parameters, of relevance to Inuit. It will open a wide range of possibilities for connecting climate and weather modeling to conditions of specific human interest at appropriate spatial and temporal scales. This developed approach will be available for wide application to any human activities affected by weather, from the under-served indigenous populations of the Arctic, to commercial and industrial enterprises taking place in severe environments.
The project is innovative, interdisciplinary, international, and legacy-building. It is innovative and interdisciplinary because it connects in new ways two very different disciplines that share a common interest in arctic environmental change. It is international because it involves Canadian and American participants, and includes links to several existing IPY projects. It builds a legacy because its approach has a wide range of potential applications for anyone who works extensively in the Arctic. The project addresses both NSF areas of ?Understanding Environmental Change in Polar Regions? and ?Human and Biotic Systems in Polar Regions,? and the linkages between the two. The latter is the focus of the project: we seek to determine exactly what aspects of meteorological change are or are likely to be most significant to Inuit hunters. The ways those hunters interact with their environment, particularly the role of weather conditions in their decision-making, will also shed light on the function of human systems in the Arctic, giving insight into the sensitivity of Inuit hunting activities to changes in weather and other environmental parameters.
This project brought together Inuit knowledge, science, weather data, and modeling results to examine changing weather patterns in the area of east coast Baffin Island. Central to the project was the collaboration of Inuit traditional knowledge holders and scientists. We found that there are clear relationships among local and regional weather and climate features and the decisions and activities of local community members. These relationships can be cast in the form of general rules or models that define the likelihood or probability of certain activities. Key among these environmental-human relationships is the concern for human safety; there are clear and well-defined safety considerations that keep community members from going out on the land. As part of our project we established the first-ever automated weather station network in this area. The near-real time data that our project has provided to the community (via website and phone recordings, both in Inuktitut and English) are useful to community members in making decisions about when and where to travel. Interviews and focus groups with residents reveal that the information is particularly valuable in summer for boat travel. For people knowledgeable about regional weather patterns, knowing the weather conditions at the station sites also informs them about likely weather and ice conditions in other areas where they want to travel. As part of the project we brought local people from our partner community to visit the researchers at their universities and homes in Colorado, strengthening the bonds between our team members and leading to increased project motivation and momentum. Most times in Arctic research, the scientists visit communities, but rarely do community members see where the scientists work, and how they work, once they leave. The exchange program, which included a high school student, was a big benefit in facilitating collaborative research and analysis in both the community and at the universities, and building stronger bonds with team members. Through close collaboration with Inuit Elders, hunters, and other experts, our team developed an innovative way to represent local environmental observations numerically. This allows us to see how those observations have changed over time and the potential impacts of future changes.
