This Master Thesis is depicting process of establishing actorness of the EU within international space, that is limited for this research on area of the Arctic. Policies of the EU are not uniformly developed, some are stronger, and some are weaker, that is a reason why in certain moments or position could be EU considered a non-actor. Document of Arctic Strategy is presenting system of three pillars- spheres in which the EU will be fulfilling its goals. Using the actorness assessment method by Bretherton, C. et Vogler, J. could be found out, how much a certain pillar is strong and whether the EU is able to fulfil its role as an actor in the light of its goals.

The recently intensifying climate changes enable a large-scale economic development of the Arctic region. This region is characterized by the vast hydrocarbon resources, but also by the unique fragile ecosystem. Therefore, any economic development must be aligned with environmental protection. This protection is encouraged by the leading intergovernmental institution in this area, the Arctic Council. This master thesis aims to analyse Russian environmental cooperation with the Arctic coastal states within the Arctic Council. Its structure follows a theoretical framework, introduced by the liberal intergovernmentalism. Firstly, formation of Russian national Arctic interests is analysed, using the key legal documents. Secondly, Russia's participation in the Arctic Council is studied. Thirdly, bilateral environmental cooperation between Russia and other four Arctic coastal states is analysed. Based on the performed research, the Russian Federation is aware, that reaching its very ambitious plans for economic development of the Arctic is only possible along with improvement of environmental protection. Russia cannot ensure this alone and therefore it actively seeks international cooperation. The research also pointed out, that before the establishment of the Arctic Council, the bilateral cooperation...

A new German research consortium is investigating the causes and effects of the rapid rise of near-surface air temperatures in the Artic. Within the last 25 years a remarkable increase of the Arctic near-surface air temperature exceeding the global warming by a factor of two to three has been observed. The phenomenon is commonly referred to as Arctic Amplification. The warming results in rather drastic changes of a variety of climate parameters. For example, the Arctic sea ice has declined significantly. This ice retreat has been well identified by satellite measurements. However, coupled regional and global climate models still fail to reproduce it adequately; they tend to systematically underestimate the observed sea ice decline. This model observation difference implies that the underlying physical processes and feedback mechanisms are not appropriately represented in Arctic climate models. Thus, the predictions of these models are also likely to be inadequate. It is mandatory to identify the origin of this disagreement. / Ein neu geschaffenes deutsches Forschungskonsortium untersucht die Ursachen und Effekte des rapiden Anstiegs der bodennahen Lufttemperatur in der Arktis. Innerhalb der letzten 25 Jahre wurde ein bemerkenswerter Anstieg der Bodenlufttemperatur in der Arktis beobachtet, welcher die globale Erwärmung um den Faktor 2 bis 3 übersteigt. Dieses Phänomen wird als arktische Verstärkung bezeichnet. Diese Erwärmung resultiert vielmehr in einer drastischen Änderung einer Vielzahl von Klimarparametern. Beispielsweise ist das arktische Meereis deutlich zurückgegangen. Dieser Eisrückgang wurde durch Satellitenbeobachtungen gut beobachtet. Dagegen haben regionale und globale Klimamodelle immer noch Probleme, den Rückgang entsprechend zu reproduzieren. Sie tendieren dazu, den Meereisrückgang systematisch zu unterschätzen. Die Unterschiede zwischen Modell und Beobachtungen legen nahe, dass die grundlegenden physikalischen Prozesse und Rückkopplungsmechanismen nicht entsprechend in arktischen Klimamodellen repräsentiert werden. Somit sind wahrscheinlich auch die Vorhersagen der Modelle unzureichend. Es ist notwendig, den Ursprung dieser Unstimmigkeit zu identifizieren.

The effects of global warming are evident throughout the Arctic, which is warming much more quickly than the rest of the planet and is increasingly being referred to as a fragile environment. The tourism industry in the area, which is built around notions of enchanted wintertime fantasy landscapes, is directly impacted by the effects of climate change. As a result, tour operators in the area are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to adapt their business practices and maintain the idealized image of a winter wonderland as tourism activities involving snow and ice are threatened by a warming landscape. The literature on Arctic tourism, climate change in the Arctic, perceptions of the landscape, last-chance tourism, and adaptation was reviewed to get a better understanding of the subject. The ten semi-structured interviews with tour operators and guides in Rovaniemi, in Finnish Lapland, and my observations during my time there allowed for the collection of data and the co-construction of narratives reflecting participants’ perceptions of the changing landscape, and how this relates to their methods of adaptation. The findings show that even though changes are being seen in the region, such as decreasing snow cover and increasing temperatures, Rovaniemi is still portrayed and promoted as a mystical winter wonderland, which can cause disappointment and unmet expectations for tourists if there is snow scarcity. Furthermore, tour operators are implementing various strategies to adapt to the changes, such as moving operations further north, offering replacement activities, and implementing changes in their marketing.

No description available.

No description available.

The Arctic region is a region defined by change. Climate change, militarization and a growing interest from both Arctic and non-Arctic states are increasing the geopolitical significance for the region. As a consequence, concerns about the Arctic region's security and what threat the region might constitute have grown.  The following thesis seeks to study in which way the Arctic region is perceived as a security and defence concern by the Swedish government and state agencies in Swedish state discourse from first of January 2019 to the 19th of June 2023. By using arguments from the Copenhagen schools Securitization Theory, the thesis aims to understand to what extent the Swedish state discourse has securitized the Arctic region and what and/or who the is presented as security issues and defence threats. The findings argue that the Swedish Arctic discourse does not securitize the Arctic region, however, patterns of securitization could be found which indicate that the region might be securitized in the future. The Swedish Arctic discourse recognise several security issues and defence threats and present cooperation with other states as well as strengthen military capabilities in northern Sweden as countermeasures. This further indicates that the Swedish Arctic discourse recognise security and defence concerns connected to the Arctic region even if they are not presented by the terms of securitization.

Understanding the drivers of climate change requires knowledge about the global carbon (C) cycle. Although inland waters play an important role in the C cycle by emitting and burying C, streams and lakes are in general overlooked in bottom-up approached C budgets. In this thesis I estimated emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) from all lakes and streams in a 15 km2 subarctic catchment in northern Sweden, and put it in relation to the total catchment C exchange. I show that high-latitude aquatic systems in general and streams in particular are hotspots for C emission to the atmosphere. Annually, the aquatic systems surveyed in this study emitted about 10.8 ± 4.9 g C m-2 yr-1 (ca. 98 % as CO2) which is more than double the amount of the C laterally exported from the catchment. Although the streams only covered about 4% of the total aquatic area they emitted ca. 95% of the total aquatic C emission. For lake emissions, the ice break-ups were the most important annual events, counting for ca. 45% of the emissions. Overall, streams dominated the aquatic CO2 emission in the catchment while lakes dominated CH4 emission, 96 % and 62 % of the totals, respectively. When summing terrestrial and aquatic C fluxes together it showed that the aquatic emissions alone account for approximately two thirds of the total annual catchment C loss. The consequence of not including inland waters in bottom-up derived C budgets is therefore a risk of overestimating the sink capacity of the subarctic landscape. However, aquatic systems can also act as C sinks, by accumulating C in sediment and thereby storing C over geological time frames. Sediment C burial rates were estimated in six lakes from a chronology based on 210Pb dating of multiple sediment cores. The burial rate ranged between 5 - 25 g C m-2 yr-1, which is of the same magnitude as lake C emissions. I show that the emission:burial ratio is about ten times higher in boreal compared to in subarctic-arctic lakes. These results indicate that the balance between lakes C emission and burial is both directly and indirectly dependent on climate. This process will likely result in a future increase of C emissions from high-latitude lakes, while the C burial capacity of these same lakes sediments weaken.

Land ice is losing mass to the worlds oceans at an accelerated rate. The worlds glaciers contain much less ice than the ice sheets but contribute equally to eustatic sea level rise and are expected to continue to do so over the coming centuries if global temperatures continue to rise. It is therefore important to characterize the mass balance of these glaciers and its relationship to climate trends and variability. In the Canadian High Arctic, analysis of long-term surface mass balance records shows a shift to more negative mass balances after 1987 and is coincident with a change in the mean location of the July circumpolar vortex, a mid-troposphere cyclonic feature known to have a strong influence on Arctic summer climate. Since 1987 the occurrence of July vortices centered in the Eastern Hemisphere have increased significantly. This change is associated with an increased frequency of tropospheric ridging over the Canadian High Arctic, higher surface air temperatures, and more negative glacier mass balance. However, regional scale mass balance modeling is needed to determine whether or not the long-term mass balance measurements in this region accurately reflect the mass balance of the entire Canadian High Arctic. The Canadian High Arctic is characterized by high relief and complex terrain that result in steep horizontal gradients in surface mass balance, which can only be resolved if models are run at high spatial resolutions. For such runs, models often require input fields such as air temperature that are derived by downscaling of output from climate models or reanalyses. Downscaling is often performed using a specified relationship between temperature and elevation (a lapse rate). Although a constant lapse rate is often assumed, this is not well justified by observations. To improve upon this assumption, near-surface temperature lapse rates during the summer ablation season were derived from surface measurements on 4 Arctic glaciers. Near-surface lapse rates vary systematically with free-air temperatures and are less steep than the free-air lapse rates that have often been used in mass balance modeling. Available observations were used to derive a new variable temperature downscaling method based on temperature dependent daily lapse rates. This method was implemented in a temperature index mass balance model, and results were compared with those derived from a constant linear lapse rate. Compared with other approaches, model estimates of surface mass balance fit observations much better when variable, temperature dependent lapse rates are used. To better account for glacier-climate feedbacks within mass balance models, more physically explicit representations of snow and ice processes must be used. Since absorption of shortwave radiation is often the single largest source of energy for melt, one of the most important parameters to model correctly is surface albedo. To move beyond the limitations of empirical snow and ice albedo parameterizations often used in surface mass balance models, a computationally simple, theoretically-based parameterization for snow and ice albedo was developed. Unlike previous parameterizations, it provides a single set of equations for the estimation of both snow and ice albedo. The parameterization also produces accurate results for a much wider range of snow, ice, and atmospheric conditions.

Arctic regions are thought to be more sensitive to climate change fluctuations, making weather data from these regions more valuable for climate modeling. Scientists have expressed an interest in deploying a robotic sensor network in these areas, minimizing the exposure of human researchers to the harsh environment, while allowing dense, targeted data collection to commence. For any such robotic system to be successful, a certain set of base navigational functionality must be developed. Further, these navigational algorithms must rely on the types of low-cost sensors that would be viable for use in a multi-agent system. A set of vision-based processing techniques have been proposed, which augment current robotic technologies for use in glacial terrains. Specifically, algorithms for estimating terrain traversability, robot localization, and terrain reconstruction have been developed which use data collected exclusively from a single camera and other low-cost robotic sensors. For traversability assessment, a custom algorithm was developed that uses local scale surface texture to estimate the terrain slope. Additionally, a horizon line estimation system has been proposed that is capable of coping with low-contrast, ambiguous horizons. For localization, a monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) filter has been fused with consumer-grade GPS measurements to produce full robot pose estimates that do not drift over long traverses. Finally, a terrain reconstruction methodology has been proposed that uses a Gaussian process framework to incorporate sparse SLAM landmarks with dense slope estimates to produce a single, consistent terrain model. These algorithms have been tested within a custom glacial terrain computer simulation and against multiple data sets acquired during glacial field trials. The results of these tests indicate that vision is a viable sensing modality for autonomous glacial robotics, despite the obvious challenges presented by low-contrast glacial scenery. The findings of this work are discussed within the context of the larger arctic sensor network project, and a direction for future work is recommended.