Informant38

Changing Arctic: Indigenous Perspectives
Chapter 3 (pdf)
ACIA Scientific Report
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment:

Heikki Hirvasvuopio:

"...especially with ground birds, we could be talking about a near extermination when compared to the previous amounts. I used to hunt them quite a lot while reindeer herding, so I have a good idea of the stocks. We cannot even talk now about the same amounts during the same day. This affects especially ptarmigans, capercaillie, and ground birds.
With small singing birds, the same trend is visible. Nowadays it is silent in the forest - they do not sing in the same way anymore. It used to be that your ears would get blocked as the singing was so powerful before.
-
Today we can have almost 30 degrees of variation in temperature in a very small time period. In the olden days the Saami would have considered this almost like an apocalypse if similar drastic changes had taken place so rapidly. Before I spent all of my winters in the forest and was at home for one week at the most. Nowadays the traditional weather forecasting cannot be done anymore as I could before.Too many significant and big changes have taken place. Certainly some predictions can be read from the way a reindeer behaves and this is still a way to look ahead, weatherwise. But for the markers in the sky we look now in vain. Long term predictions cannot be done anymore."

-
Weather, rain, and extreme events
[Olga] Avdeyeva reported that climate variation had been witnessed locally and had caused alarm.

"I would say the climate is warming globally, we have already observed this here. For example the reindeer herders coming out off the tundra have said that last year the bogs and rivers stayed open for a long time and it was hard to gather the reindeer.
If this event was previously due in November, now we have it in December or January. Bogs stay unfrozen for a long time and it is very difficult to try to catch reindeer in such conditions.
The herders say the climate has warmed and everything is a result of that."

Avdeyeva pointed out that change is more than general warming. Extreme events have been seen mostly in the spring time.
"This year we had thunder in May, and usually this occurs in July."