Human And Cryosphere Interaction. Small Scale Effects of Cryosphere Change on Humans (eBook)

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2019 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Physical Geography, Geomorphology, Environmental Studies, grade: 1.3, University of Bonn, language: English, abstract: At first this work will look at the different aspects of the cryosphere and the changes that occur in these different areas. As the cryosphere includes many different aspects, only the changes occurring in the following aspects will be examined: sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets, and permafrost. Afterwards a selection of small-scale impacts from these changes on different aspects of human life aspects will be explained. Here the wide range of different aspects of human life, which will be affected by these changes will be shown. In the end the findings will be concluded and an outlook into the future will be given.

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that humanity is facing today. It will cause, global effects that will have severe impacts on many aspects of human life (IPPC 2014). But some areas of the world will be more affected by these changes than others. One of these areas is the cryosphere. The global cryosphere encompasses all aspects of the frozen realm, including glaciers and ice sheets, sea ice, lake and river ice, permafrost, seasonal snow, and ice crystals in the atmosphere.

There are three mayor cryosphere regions, these are: Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean and the extra polar snow and mountain environments. As these mountain ranges are located all over the globe, cryosphere areas can even be found along the equator. Climate change will be felt earlier and more severely in the cryosphere and in the arctic regions, than the rest of the world. This is the case because as snow cover, sea ice and ice sheets diminish, this will produce further warming as the albedo in these areas decreases. Changes in these areas due to climate change will have severe impact on the human way of life. Especially native inhabitants of these cryosphere areas will be affected, as they have lesser capabilities to adapt to these changes, which threaten their way of life. In this paper we will focus on the social and economic impacts of these changes, with a special focus on how native arctic inhabitants will be affected. They deserve a special focus as they are most affected by these changes, while only contributing little to the anthropogenic climate change.