A call to strengthen international collaboration to assess climate change effects in polar regions

Abstract

Climate change is exerting complex and transformative effects in the Arctic and Antarctic; regions that are essential to global climate, biodiversity, and sustainable futures. Given the polar regions’ roles in Earth’s system, a robust, coordinated, and innovative strategy to monitor and manage climate change effects is needed. Insufficient baseline data, inconsistent international collaboration, and short-term financing are obstacles to effectively monitor these changes. This hinders our understanding of biodiversity shifts, their implications for food security, and climate change mitigation. Confronting the impacts of climate change will require interdisciplinary collaboration and genuine participation of nations, including Indigenous communities. This sentiment includes facilitating international cooperation to address scientific objectives despite political tensions. Additional recommendations include establishing regular international requirements to track progress based on available science, optimizing the use of existing infrastructure and resources, enhancing data sharing practices, and securing long-term financing to sustain research. While the existing pan-Antarctic and pan-Arctic initiatives present useful strategies, these initiatives are not a silver bullet. They do, however, provide a starting point for further work. Ultimately, by building upon existing initiatives and harnessing their successful components, we can address limitations of short-term or fragmented studies. We outline tools and data resources for polar research, examples of existing collaborative efforts to build upon, and Indigenous knowledge systems that provide valuable resources for this undertaking.