U24D-01
Data Sharing, Access, and Archiving in IPY
The interdisciplinary breadth of the International Polar Year is unprecedented. The IPY has explicit objectives to link researchers across different fields to address questions and issues lying beyond the scope of individual disciplines and to strengthen international coordination of research and enhance international collaboration and cooperation. The IPY Data Policy and Management Subcommittee have developed a policy to help meet these objectives and an international collaboration of investigators and data managers, the IPY Data and Information Service, are working to make IPY data widely available. I will present an overview of the primary data management considerations for IPY and how diverse organizations are making IPY and related data available. Centralized discovery mechanisms for widely distributed data plus targeted access mechanisms for specific disciplines will be presented. These range from near real time access to satellite remote sensing data and GCM output to fair and appropriate access to traditional knowledge of the Arctic. Finally IPY has an objective leave a legacy of observing sites, facilities and networks, as well as individual data and data systems to support ongoing polar research and monitoring. Efforts to develop and maintain that legacy through effective data archiving and engagement with ongoing international activities such as the Sustained Arctic Observing Network and Global Earth Observing System of Systems will be discussed. http://ipydis.org
U24D-02
Permafrost and the International Polar Year
During recent decades warming of permafrost terrains have been observed in boreholes over many continental
regions and mid-latitude mountains, accompanied in some cases by increased thickness of the seasonally
thawed zone, or active layer. In addition to temperature measurements increased availability of remotely-sensed,
time series and in situ measurements of trace gas fluxes are providing information on recent changes to the
diverse, permafrost-dominated landscapes, including changes in eroding coastlines and lake-dominated
terrains. During the International Polar Year, four IPY-approved projects are coordinated by the International
Permafrost Association (IPA) and that are designed to establish the current status of permafrost conditions and
recent changes.
Permafrost Observatory Project: A Contribution to the Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) will develop a spatially
distributed set of observations on the status of permafrost temperatures, active layer depths and periglacial
landform activity.
Antarctic and sub-Antarctic Permafrost, Periglacial and Soil Environments Project (ANTPAS) is aimed at
integrating existing and new data on the distribution, thickness, age, history and physical and geochemical
properties of soils and permafrost.
Carbon Pools in Permafrost Regions (CAPP) project is aimed at quantifying soil organic matter quantity (stocks)
and its quality in high-latitude and high-altitude regions and that are characterized by both permafrost and non-
permafrost terrains.
Arctic Circum-Polar Coastal Observatory Network (ACCO-Net) plans to develop and coordinate a monitoring
program incorporating diverse coastal regions.
Our collective IPY permafrost legacy is to establish a permanent, bipolar network of observatories and to
encourage the development of the next generation of permafrost researchers. The Permafrost Young Researcher
Network (PYRN), the International University Courses on Permafrost (IUCP), and a centralized data activity are
part of the IPA efforts. Initial results of these IPY activities will be presented in summer 2008 at the Ninth
International Conference on Permafrost, Fairbanks, Alaska
U24D-03
POLENET: Polar Earth Observing Network for the International Polar Year
The Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET) multinational consortium has begun deployment of new networks of in situ sensors in the Arctic and across Antarctica for the International Polar Year (IPY). Activities already underway and planned for the IPY period will be reviewed. Efforts are focused on deployment of autonomous observatories at remote sites on the continents and offshore, coordinated with measurements made at permanent station observatories and by satellite campaigns. Measurements (in situ, satellite and airborne) will include GPS (w/ GLONASS, Galileo; GPS occultation/met sensors), seismic, gravity, geomagnetic, tide gauges and ocean bottom sensors, oceanographic (in situ and altimetry) and chemical (at offshore sites). Multidisciplinary deep sea observatories on the polar seafloor will perform continuous collection of geophysical, oceanographic and geochemical data. The POLENET initiative is designed to provide a legacy in observational infrastructure in the polar regions and in the technological capability to overcome the challenges of autonomous operations in extreme environments.
U24D-04
Constraining the Response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to Climate Change During the Past 150 Years Using Measurements of Sea-Level Change
In-situ and geodetic observations of the Greenland ice sheet (GIS) during the past ~5 years have indicated that dramatic changes in some outlet glacier flow velocities and ice mass have occurred. It has been suggested that these changes mark the beginning of a significant long term response of the ice sheet to recent climate warming. It is clearly important to determine if these changes are unique within the past ~150 year history of the ice sheet, during which time it has been subjected to significant climate variation. In particular, it is known that there was a marked and extended climate warming in the 1920s and 30s. There are very few direct observations of the ice sheet in the first half of the 20th century and so it is not possible to estimate ice volume changes over extended areas. We shall present a novel method, based on the observation of sea-level changes over century to decadal time scales, that can provide unique information on mass changes of the GIS during the past ~150 years. Preliminary modelling results for sea-level data obtained from south west Greenland will be presented.
U24D-05
Arctic transport climatologies for the International Arctic System for Observing the Atmosphere (IASOA) and POLARCAT
Several intensive campaigns have recently focused on the transformation and transport of pollutants to the Arctic. During the International Polar Year large-scale coordinated aircraft campaigns will be conducted throughout the circum-Arctic as a part of the POLARCAT project. Additionally, measurements at surface based sites in the IASOA network will be coordinated to capture unique transport events. Toward improved interpretation of the measurements, 10-year transport climatologies are being developed using the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART. This paper presents the climatologies for IASOA network, but also introduces FLEXPART products available for the aircraft campaigns. Climatologies are based on 20-day backward model runs for each station using globally gridded 1°x1° input fields from the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). For analysis of specific measurements, model output for each station is generated at six hour intervals (0, 6, 12, 18 UTC). There are 60 vertical levels, switching to 92 after March, 2006 in the input data. Calculations are based on the release of 40,000 particles representing an idealized inert tracer with an infinite lifetime allowing for interpretation of the results by a wide range of experimentalists. The generated source-receptor relationships are averaged into a seasonal climatology for the various locations. We present ‘retroplumes' or three-dimensional Potential Emissions Sensitivity (PES) for the stations. The PES (s kg-1) in each grid cell is proportional to the particle residence time in the cell. For a given source with unit strength (1 kg s-1) the PES provides the simulated mixing ratio at the receptor site. A cluster analysis of particle locations also provides the ability to evaluate the proportion of particles residing in the stratosphere. From this analysis we provide, in addition to the PES, the cluster centroid locations, most analogous to traditional trajectories. Initial results from a concurrent study with HYSPLIT showing seasonal trajectories are also presented http://transport.nilu.no
U24D-06
The EU Damocles Integrated Project and the IPY iAOOS Connection
In the context of the International Polar Year, the European Union has launched an ambitious program, the so- called integrated project DAMOCLES for Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environment Studies. Formal extensions of DAMOCLES towards the East (Russia and Belarus) and the West (USA) with the Search for Damocles EU-US initiative and further implications and cooperations with national programs such as SPACE (Germany), NABOS (USA), iAOOS-Norway, NP35 (Russia), enhances the contribution of DAMOCLES to the integrated Arctic Ocean Observing System (iAOOS) IPY labelled project. The main goals of DAMOCLES are to better understand the fate of Arctic Sea-Ice related to changes in the atmospheric and oceanic circulations in the context of a global warming and consequences related to a predicted disappearance of arctic sea-ice in summertime or in other words a disappearance of the Arctic perennial ice. The most advanced numerical models and innovative high technology are used and developed respectively to collect and select sensitive data over a wide range of space and time scales in the lower atmosphere, in the upper ocean and through the sea-ice all over the Arctic Ocean. Important preliminary results have already been obtained such as a surprisingly abundant formation of frazil ice during winter and a very significant acceleration of the transpolar sea-ice drift across the Arctic Ocean. In this presentation we will describe some of these early results and introduce the whole range of on-going and scheduled DAMOCLES/iAOOS activities in the near future during IPY.