Abstract: To identify the Arctic environmental research gap between China and other countries, we built an advanced Arctic scientific research framework based on the CiteSpace tool, a bibliometric tool, to conduct a literature review for nearly 30 years of Chinese and international Arctic environmental research from 1990 to 2020. Through co-occurrence, clustering, and co-citation analysis, we found that the development of Arctic environmental research can be divided into slow development, rapid development and stable development stages, and the eight Arctic countries and Germany, Britain and France are the leaders in Arctic environmental research. We also found that Arctic environmental studies are closely related to the disciplines of geology and atmospheric sciences. Sea ice, tundra, permafrost, and snow cover are the most commonly researched environmental media in the Arctic. There is a recent research trend toward examining pollutants such as chlorinated hydrocarbons, ozone, heavy metals, black carbon, as well as persistent organic pollutants. Comparative analysis of the evolution of Chinese and international research found that international Arctic environmental research over 2010—2020 has focused on polar bears, black carbon, perfluorooctane sulfonate, mercury and microplastics. Chinese research on black carbon, microplastics and perfluorooctane sulfonate closely follows the international trend and takes advantage of the height of the Tibetan Plateau to conduct large-scale climate change research; however, Chinese research has obvious deficiencies regarding ecotoxicology. We conclude by proposing that Chinese researchers place greater emphasis on the pollution of environmental media such as sea ice, tundra, permafrost and snow cover to study the occurrence, form, concentration levels and spatial distributions of pollutants. Such research could use techniques from geology, biology, remote sensing and numerical modeling to identify pollution sources, to obtain particle size distribution information and Arctic biological data, and to analyze the biological amplification effect, cumulative effects and potential ecological toxicity of pollutants. This would open up diversified channels for international cooperation and establish active scientific research cooperation in the Arctic environment. It would also further enhance China's long-term monitoring capability in the Arctic region for observing and predicting the temporal trend of Arctic climate change.

Key words: Arctic, CiteSpace, pollutants, environmental research, climate change