The work of the Polar Climate Stability Network (PCSN) focusses on the problem of climate change at high northern latitudes, the region of Earth that we expect will be most strongly affected by greenhouse gas induced global warming. Since the Canadian landmass and adjacent shelves of the Arctic Ocean constitute a major portion of this region, the issue of the stability of northern ecosystems to the expected, indeed already clearly evident, climate change is an important national concern. The scientific efforts of the PCSN group involve investigations under four primary themes, respectively connected with the issues of (1) Rapid climate change in both the terrestrial and oceanographic realms, (2) The stability of the polar cryosphere involving both land ice and sea ice, (3) The North Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation in coupled climate models as viewed from the perspective of paleoclimatology and Earth System history and finally, (4) The mechanism(s) by which the tropical oceans may exert an influence, through a variety of "teleconnection" mechanisms, on high latitude climate change. The scientific program involves both an observational component and a theoretical modelling component in the work under each of the four themes. The observational aspects of the program involve the use of deep sea sedimentary cores, ice cores from the ice caps in the eastern Canadian Arctic archipelago and in the high mountains such as Mt. Logan in the west, as well as pollen based records from high latitude lakes and records of temperature change with depth in deep boreholes in surface bedrock.
The Polar Climate Stability Network is funded by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS).
