Past climate variations in arctic areas, especially those of the Quaternary period, have caused major environmental changes resulting in significant impacts on the cryosphere and marine and terrestrial environments. Stratigraphic records and imprints in the land- and seascape bear witness to the processes and changes that have taken place during this period (). As arctic areas currently are undergoing noteworthy climate warming that is expected to be amplified in the future, the knowledge of past environmental processes and changes are key to projecting how the Arctic will respond to continued climatic change.
Figure 1. Looking toward the Paulabreen glacier front in Rindersbukta, Van Mijenfjorden, Svalbard (23 August 2010). During a surge event in 2005 the glacier advanced about 1 km over four months. The glacier also experienced a major surge event about 648 to 551 cal BP. These events left behind characteristic morphological imprints on land and the fjord bottom. Photograph by Astrid Lyså (Geological Survey of Norway).
Papers for a special collection (section) in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, “PalaeoArc: Processes and Palaeo-environmental Changes in the Arctic—From Past to Present” were invited from the Second PalaeoArc International Conference, Pisa, Italy, held online from 24 to 28 May 2021.
This collection is inspired by the international research programme network PalaeoArc, which aims to understand and explain the climatically induced environmental changes in the Arctic that have taken place throughout the Quaternary and continue to the present day. The collected papers represent new results within the four major themes of the programme: (1) the dynamics of the arctic ice sheets, ice shelves, and glaciers; (2) the dynamics of high-latitude oceans and sea ice; (3) the dynamics of the terrestrial environment and landscape evolution; and (4) the climatic response to, and interaction between, these different parts of the arctic system.
The guest editors for the PalaeoArc special collection are Astrid Lyså (Geological Survey of Norway, Trondheim, Norway), Caterina Morigi (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Pisa, Italy), Chris R. Stokes, (Department of Geography, Durham University, United Kingdom), and Monica Winsborrow (Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate, UiT The Arctic University of Norway).