Ongoing climatic change in Northern Eurasia: justification for expedient research

A brief overview of the ongoing climatic and environmental changes in Northern Eurasia serves as an editorial introduction to this, the second, special Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) focus issue of Environmental Research Letters. Climatic changes in Northern Eurasia over the last hundred years are reflected in numerous atmospheric and terrestrial variables. Many of these are noticeably significant above the confidence level for 'weather' or other (fire regime, ecosystem change) noise and thus should be further investigated in order to adapt to their impacts. In this focus issue, we introduce assorted studies of different aspects of contemporary change in Northern Eurasia. Most of these have been presented at one of the NEESPI workshops (for more information see neespi.org) and/or American Geophysical Union and European Geosciences Union NEESPI open sessions during the past year. These studies are diverse, representing the diversity of climates and ecosystems across Northern Eurasia. Some of these are focused on smaller spatial scales and/or address only specific aspects of the global change implications across the subcontinent. But the feeling (and observational evidence) that these changes have already been quite rapid and can have global implications inspires us to bring this suite of papers to the readers' attention. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.