Response of Arctic temperature to changes in emissions of short-lived climate 
forcers

Maria Sand

There is growing scientific and political interest in the impacts of climate change 
and anthropogenic emissions on the Arctic. Over recent decades temperatures in the 
Arctic have increased at twice the global rate, largely due to ice albedo and 
temperature feedbacks. While deep cuts in global CO2 emissions are required to 
slow this warming, there is also growing interest in the potential for reducing short-
lived climate forcers (SLCFs). Politically, action on SLCFs may be particularly 
promising because the benefits of mitigation appear more quickly than CO2 and 
there are large co-benefits in terms of improved air quality. This paper is one of the 
first to systematically quantify the Arctic climate impact of regional SLCFs emissions, 
taking into account BC, sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile 
organic compounds (VOC), organic carbon (OC) and tropospheric ozone, their 
transport processes and transformations in the atmosphere. This study extends the 
scope of the previous work by including more detailed calculations of Arctic 
radiative forcing and quantifying the Arctic temperature response. We find that the 
largest Arctic warming source is from emissions within the Asian nations owing to 
the large absolute amount of emissions. However, the Arctic is most sensitive, per 
unit mass emitted, to SLCFs emissions from a small number of activities within the 
Arctic nations themselves.  A stringent, but technically feasible SLCFs mitigation 
scenario, phased in from 2015 through 2030, can cut warming by 0.2 (+-0.17) K in 
2050.