Exposure of the Arcitic Marine Surface Ecosystems to Environmental Disturbance

Averaged exposure of the Arctic marine surface ecosystems to environment changes is estimated from various environmental data for the period of January 2009 - December 2015. The control variables for the environmental changes were selected to represent several, but not all of, natural environmental processes that define Planetary Boundaries (Rockstrom et a., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015) . These processes were selected to include ocean-relevant processes, such as climate change, ocean acidification, aerosol loading, Phosphorous/Nitrogen discharge from the terrestrial realm. Corresponding variables for the selected processes are the seaice fraction and sea surface temperature (climate change), saturation state number for aragonite (ocean acidification), aerosol optical thickness (aerosol loading), terrigenous CDOM (as an index for the riverine P/N). The last control variable, terrigineous CDOM, is estimated based on Fichot et al. 2013. All environmental data were spatially interpolated so that nominal spacial resolution is 4km. Monthly data were used to calculate the averaged exposure during the above period (2009-2015). The exposure was calculated as the 1st principal component of the control variables.