“The resiliency of indigenous populations is being severely challenged.”

Get ready to welcome new plants and animals along with unfamiliar diseases, crumbling coastlines, avalanches and unstable buildings, and say goodbye to travelling over the sea ice, seals and polar bears, if the world's warming continues unchecked.

The Arctic will be "especially affected" by climate change, says the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

As the region warms, communities can expect to see more severe flooding, erosion, droughts and destruction of permafrost, which will threaten public health, infrastructure and water supplies.

Fewer Arctic residents will die from cold-related injuries and health conditions. But the arrival of new insects and diseases, such as tick-borne encephalitis, will bring new threats.

Changes in the amounts and timing of rain and snowfalls will also dump more contaminants into Arctic rivers and lakes, where they will enter the food chain.

These are among the findings from a new panel report released on April 6 in Brussels. Earlier this week, Nunatsiaq News obtained confidential draft summaries of the second volume of its four-part 2007 climate assessment.

In this report, the panel looks at how climate change affects the environment and people, what the effects will be in the future, and how far adaptation and mitigation can reduce these impacts.

"Arctic human communities are already being required to adapt to climate change," the panel says. "The resiliency of indigenous populations is being severely challenged."

And the panel says more challenges lie ahead.

The panel warns that unless the world's leaders act now, the weight of climate change may prove too hard and costly to carry in the future.

Some improvements to transportation in the Arctic may prove to be positive in a warmer world, but overall, changes will be "strongly negative," says the panel, particularly if the global temperature rise is greater or more rapid.

Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people will be vulnerable to flooding. Flooding will most highly affect people who live close to the land, and poorer communities will be the most at risk.

The panel says 20 to 30 per cent of species are likely to be "at high risk of irreversible extinction," if the average global temperature increases more than 1.5 to 2.5 C over 1990 levels.

With uncontrolled warming, the panel warns there could be large impacts after 2100, as melting ice sheets increase sea levels and alter ocean currents. These changes in ocean currents may even lead to a cooling in the northern high latitude areas near Greenland after 2100, the panel suggests.

"Relocating populations, economic activity, and infrastructure would be costly and challenging," says the panel.

The panel's point-by-point assessment of impacts of climate change on the polar regions says:

• By the end of the century, average sea ice cover will be down by about one-third;
• Over the next 100 years, Arctic glaciers and the Greenland ice cap will shrink and contribute to rising sea levels;
• By 2050, permafrost will decrease from 20 to 35 per cent;
• By 2100, forests will replace 10 per cent of Arctic tundra and 50 per cent, if temperatures rise 4 C over 1990 levels;
• By 2100, tundra will replace polar desert by 10 to 25 per cent;
• Habitats for birds and mammals will decrease, "with major implications for predators such as seals and polar bears;"
• Alien species will move into the Arctic;
• Ice cover on lakes and rivers will decrease;
• Cold-loving fish stocks will suffer;
• Fires and insect infestations will increase in forest tundra areas.

The panel calls for adaptation and mitigation efforts to tackle these impacts, saying many impacts can be reduced or delayed. More sustainable development, using non-polluting sources of energy, in addition to research and monitoring, may help the world slow the warming.

But the panel says there will be barriers, limits and costs to what can be done to help people adapt.

That's because technology, changes to behaviour and policy won't be able to cope with all the projected effects of climate change – "and especially not over the long run as most impacts increase in magnitude," the panel says.

About 285 officials from 124 countries met this week with scientists this week in Brussels, to fine-tune the panel's summaries.

This past February, the panel declared it "very likely" that most global warming has been caused by man made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the massive amounts of oil, gasoline and coal that human beings have burned since 1750.