Scott Stephenson

RAND Corporation | RAND

The “network” has gained widespread acceptance within economic geography as a metaphor for economic interaction. Consistent with a global production network (GPN) approach, extractive industries are deeply embedded in political structures, physical infrastructure, and environmental conditions. We advocate for a GPN framework that emphasizes the co-...

Though climate models exhibit broadly similar agreement on key long-term trends, they have significant temporal and spatial differences due to intermodel variability. Such variability should be considered when using climate models to project the future marine Arctic. Here we present multiple scenarios of 21st-century Arctic marine access as driven...

Recent Arctic sea ice retreat indicates that the Russian coastal seas encompassing the Northern Sea Route (NSR) will be among the first marine environments to transition to a summer ice-free state. Forty-six voyages carrying 1.26 million tons of cargo in 2012 suggest increasing economic viability of the NSR for eastward transport of natural resourc...

Climate models project continued Arctic sea ice reductions with nearly ice-free summer conditions by the mid-21st century. However, how such reductions will realistically enable marine access is not well understood, especially considering a range of climatic scenarios and ship types. We present 21st century projections of technical shipping accessi...

Recent historic observed lows in Arctic sea ice extent, together with climate model projections of additional ice reductions in the future, have fueled speculations of potential new trans-Arctic shipping routes linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. However, numerical studies of how projected geophysical changes in sea ice will realistically impa...

This study investigates the impact of hubs, CO2 emission taxation policy, and bunker fuels on the economic and environmental attractiveness of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). Twenty-eight years of historical ice data have been combined to define the uncertainty level of ice thickness and concentration and converted to risk indexes using POLARIS, a r...

Previous studies have identified the importance of simulating and quantifying the relationship between hydrologic variation and climate change under historical scenarios at regional and continental scales. However, robust demonstration of the potential of combining consistent land use/cover change (LUCC) and climate change to simulate future hydrol...

La Route Maritime Nord (RMN) est un sujet qui depuis quelques années avec la diminution de la couverture de glace et de son épaisseur et les découvertes de son potentiel énergétique fait couler beaucoup d’encres. Si la RMN a un véritable potentiel économique à plusieurs niveaux, elle n’est pas exempte de contraintes plus ou moins lourdes. Cependant...

Global and national climate assessments are comprehensive, authoritative sources of information about observed and projected climate changes and their impacts on society. These assessments follow well-known, accepted procedures to create credible, legitimate, salient sources of information for policy- and decision-making, build capacity for action,...

The wide spectrum of national priorities and attendant climate positions among parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been a hallmark of international climate negotiations. The Paris Agreement was lauded as a landmark step toward global climate action because it represented a consensus of more than 190 co...

Simulating land use/cover change (LUCC) and determining its transition rules have been a focus of research for several decades. Previous studies used ordinary logistic regression (OLR) to determine transition rules in cellular automata (CA) modeling of LUCC, which often neglected the spatially non-stationary relationships between driving factors an...

Ensuring safe navigation is paramount for the economic development of the Arctic. Aware of this strategic issue, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), supported by the Arctic coastal states, adopted the Polar Code with a set of navigation tools including the well-known Polar Operational Limit Assessment Risk Indexing System (POLARIS). Desi...

Supporting Information S1

As global temperatures increase, sea ice loss will increasingly enable commercial shipping traffic to cross the Arctic Ocean, where the ships' gas and particulate emissions may have strong regional effects. Here we investigate impacts of shipping emissions on Arctic climate using a fully coupled Earth system model (CESM 1.2.2) and a suite of newly...

Climate change and land use and cover change (LUCC) have had great impacts on watershed hydrological processes. Although previous studies have focused on quantitative assessment of the impacts of climate change and human activities on decreasing runoff change, few studies have examined regions which have significant increasing runoff due to both cl...

In this thematic issue, six papers and three short commentaries investigate the evolving nature of borders in the Arctic in an era of climate change and globalization. Together, they illustrate how processes unique to the Arctic, such as sea ice melt and Inuit self-governance, tell a larger story about the co-evolving relationship of people and the...

Sea ice presents an important challenge for trans-border coordination of Arctic maritime infrastructure. Widespread summer sea-ice melt and anticipated expansion of shipping and offshore oil and gas drilling have highlighted a need for seasonal forecasts and decadal projections of sea ice for strategic planning efforts. While the long-term trend in...

This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining how our notions of geopolitics of water may shift in the context of this new and, at times, divisive framework. The Anthropocene describes the geological epoch in which humans are the dominant actor in the global environmental system and has been a con...

This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining how our notions of geopolitics of water may shift in the context of this new and, at times, divisive framework. The Anthropocene describes the geological epoch in which humans are the dominant actor in the global environmental system and has been a con...

The Columbia Climate Center, in partnership with World Wildlife Fund, Woods Hole Research Center, and Arctic 21, held a workshop titled A 5 C Arctic in a 2 C World on July 20 and 21, 2016. The workshop was co-sponsored by the International Arctic Research Center (University of Alaska Fairbanks), the Arctic Institute of North America (Canada), the M...

The Russian and Norwegian Arctic are gaining notoriety as an alternative maritime route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and as sources of natural resources. The renewed interest in the Northeast Passage or the Northern Sea Route is fueled by a recession of Arctic sea ice coupled with the discovery of new natural resources at a time when...

Recent Arctic sea ice retreat indicates that the Russian coastal seas encompassing the Northern Sea Route (NSR) will be among the first marine environments to transition to a summer ice-free state. Forty-six voyages carrying 1.26 million tons of cargo in 2012 suggest increasing economic viability of the NSR for eastward transport of natural resourc...

Climate change has spurred global interest in the Arctic as an arena of new potential for petroleum and mineral exploration. The prospect of increased access to resources has informed scenarios depicting the region's future as a theater of geopolitical aggression. Militarization has been increasing in the Arctic despite the existence of multilatera...

Understanding climate change impacts on transportation systemsis particularly critical in northern latitudes, where subzero temperatures restrict shipping, but enable passage of ground vehicles over frozen soil and water surfaces. Although the major transport challenges related to climate warming are understood, so far there have been no quantitati...