Climate warming is expected to have its greatest impact in Arctic regions, with predictions being made of temperature increases in summer months as high as ten degrees Celsius under a doubling of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Such changes would have significant impacts on energy operations in this region and on future energy developments.
This paper presents an overview of the types of impacts that might occur under conditions of climate warming with specific concern for those impacts that would affect energy operations. It also discusses the variations in the predictions provided by general circulation models of the atmosphere, which provide us with the only source of information on temperature and precipitation changes that might accompany the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases. Present work on the impacts of climate change by the author is centred on the Mackenzie Valley, and this region is used as a setting to illustrate the types of impacts that may occur.
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