The Arctic coast is undergoing dramatic physical, biogeochemical and socio-economical changes. Environmental factors such as warming air temperatures, declining sea ice, permafrost thaw and increased forcing events (storminess) are critical drivers accelerating these changes. Increasing erosion rates lead to the release of large amounts of organic matter and contaminants to the nearshore zone and the upper shelf, transforming the ecosystem and altering trophic systems. It is also putting new pressures on Arctic coastal dynamics with the loss of landscapes and cultural heritage sites as well as damages on infrastructure creating stress and uncertainty in local communities. The aim of this session is to bring together researchers, indigenous partners and community members who are studying, predicting, modelling and living with these dramatic coastal and nearshore changes across the Arctic. This session will ultimately provide critical information to support future planning, mitigation and adaptation measures of these changing permafrost coastal landscapes. This session is co-organized by the EU H2020 Nunataryuk and the NSF PerCS-Net project and is a contribution to the coastal processes action group of T-MOSAiC.
Coast, permafrost, shelf, erosion
Hugues Lantuit | Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Leneisja Jungsberg | Nordregio
Benjamin Jones | University of Alaska Fairbanks
The Arctic is undergoing rapid environmental changes, such as the loss of sea ice and changes in freshwater content. These shifts have impacts on biogeochemical cycling in the rest of the Arctic system, including impacts on carbon dioxide, methane and oxygen. This session will address what the future Arctic biogeochemical system may look like and how the ocean observing community can both capture these expected changes and use these studies to co-design decision support tools with impacted communities and industries. We invite contributions from a variety of studies that use observations, models, and community sampling efforts to address the past, present, and future biogeochemistry of the Arctic. We encourage submissions that focus on the relationship between biogeochemistry and broader patterns of variability in the Arctic and beyond, such as changes in the Arctic carbon sink; new links between coupled atmosphere-sea ice-ocean processes; and biogeochemical impacts on Arctic food webs, including human communities.
biogeochemistry, acidification, coupled processes, food webs, human communities
Darren Pilcher | University of Washington, Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean
Agneta Fransson | Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre
Takuhei Shiozaki | Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo
A better understanding of the causes and consequences of the changing Arctic sea-ice cover is essential for evaluating and predicting the changes in the Arctic environment and their global impacts. New and improved parameterizations of key processes and interactions between the atmosphere, snow, sea ice, and ocean are needed for advancing forecasting capabilities. As an integrator of energy, momentum, and mass fluxes between the atmosphere and ocean, the sea-ice cover is a unique and central feature of the polar oceans. Most of these linkages underlay a strong seasonality with the sea ice, and are affected by its long-term trend. We expect that changes in the Arctic sea-ice system have cascading effects on the marine ecosystem and biogeochemical pathways therein. In order to answer pressing questions regarding the roles of Arctic atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions in a warming climate, the international MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) was initiated as year-long, field program in the central Arctic. Field observations were performed with immediate involvements of remote sensing, airborne and modelling studies, creating a wide range of opportunities for synthesizing disciplines and techniques. While the MOSAiC program is outstanding for observing and analyzing the full annual cycle of key parameters and processes, many other initiatives and projects also directly contribute to bridging the scales from localized, process-oriented studies and analyses of synoptic events to basin-wide conclusions. Here, we invite presentations from all the different coordinated sea ice, ocean, and atmospheric projects that work across disciplines in the Central Arctic. We invite contributions that investigate linkages within the coupled Arctic system or show approaches to elevate our process understanding. Model and in-situ studies (incl. airborne and satellite programs) on the central Arctic energy budget and its seasonal and long-term changes are welcome as much as comparisons of time-series measurements with climatological conditions. These studies may range from micro-structures and microbiological exchanges to hemispheric analyses and improved forecasts.
Atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions, Sea ice processes and properties, Bio-physical interactions, Biogeochemical fluxes, Arctic system science
Marcel Nicolaus | Alfred-Wegener-Insititut Helmholtz-Zentrum
Jessie Creamean | Colorado State University
Melinda Webster | University of Alaska Fairbanks, Geophysical Institute
The Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) covers most of the High-Seas area of the Arctic Ocean, and is characterised by deep basins, permanent sea-ice cover and large distance to land. However, in the past years, up to 40 % of the CAO has been ice-free during summer, which is transforming this heavily under-studied marine ecosystem. In particular, there almost nothing is known on the presence, distribution and changes with climate change of fish populations in the CAO. In response to increasing access to the CAO and very low scientific knowledge base, the “Agreement to prevent unregulated High Seas fisheries in the CAO” was signed in 2018. This Agreement takes a precautionary approach by essentially preventing any fishery in the Arctic High Seas, until a sound scientific knowledge base is available about the present fish stocks, the ecosystems sustaining them, and their expected fate in a changing CAO. This session invites presentations on (1) new observations on fish in the CAO, (2) tools and standardisation of procedures for under ice fishing, (3) identify knowledge gaps that obstruct any quantitative analyses and modeling of its fish stocks, (4) discuss if a future fishery in the area would be possible at all.
Central Arctic Ocean, High Seas, fish, ecosystem, management
Pauline Snoeijs Leijonmalm | Stockholm University
Susa Niiranen | Stockholm University
Conservation of the newly opening Central Arctic Ocean demands information to obtain from joint research and monitoring as well as knowledge available only from local and indigenous wisdom. This is a major emphasis in the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean, which will enter into force soon. There are significant ongoing efforts to collect information and produce knowledge in the CAO, such as field research programs, literature based assessments and policy level dialogues. However, facilitated discussion among different actors alone will not meet the current and future demands for the CAO. A system to consolidate information from a range of sources and to deliver critical knowledge is a must and also a real challenge, apart from the paucity of information. Defining management objectives, identifying the utility of different sets of information and developing the process to link them will be equally important and require contributions from both suppliers and users of knowledge. Such models can be lessons for management and governance beyond the Arctic.
Central Arctic Ocean, knowledge production system, joint research and monitoring, local and indigenous knowledge, ecosystem conservation
Hyoung Chul Shin | Korea Polar Research Institute, Republic of Korea
Alfred Jakobsen | Oceans North Greenland, Greenland
Ingeborg Mulder | Wageningen Marine Research, Netherlands
Fast changes in the Arctic marine and terrestrial environment create a significant stress on the local societies and industries. This necessitates assessment of the impacts through utilizing comprehensive information across a wide range of the scientific disciplines. The session aims to facilitate existing and forge new interdisciplinary communications and collaborations. We invite presentations bridging the gap between marine physics and biogeochemistry on one side and social sciences and economics on the other. In particular (but not exclusively), the session welcomes the topics on marine permafrost decay, coastal erosion, ocean currents and waves, changes in landfast ice and sea ice and impacts on marine ecosystems from the industrial development, such as shipping and mineral resource exploitation. We invite submissions offering new approaches in modelling and observations to understand current and future environmental changes and their consequences for socio-economics in the region.
Arctic change; marine environment; socio-economic impacts; models; observations
Stefanie Rynders | National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom
Igor Kozlov | Russian State Hydrometeorological University, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation; Marine Hydrophysical Institute of Russian Academy of Science, Russian Federation
Yevgeny Aksenov | National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom
Arctic sea ice is undergoing rapid retreat triggered by climate change. The highly interactive planktonic microbial communities respond to these dramatic changes with already documented impact in the whole biogeochemical compartments of the Arctic ocean. These changes are very complex although crucial to understand because plankton microbial communities sustain Arctic primary production and are the basis of the Arctic food webs. In this session, we welcome papers addressing the impact of the Arctic climate change trends on bacterioplankton, phytoplankton and microplankton-mediated key processes as primary production and biogeochemical cycles. We are especially interested in long term and large spatial scale studies, covering coastal and open ocean areas, to improve our understanding on the emerging risks of ongoing changes to human communities and to help defining appropriate mitigation and adaptation actions.
Arctic Ocean, Climate Change, Microplankton Communities, Primary Production, Biogeochemical Cycles
Catarina Magalhães | CIIMAR-Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research
Pedro Duarte | NPI – Norwegian Polar Institute
Maria Paola Tomasino | CIIMAR-Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research
In recent decades, global warming has been amplified in the Arctic region, and sea ice is disappearing at unprecedented rates. Mechanisms for climate change on the regional scale need to be better understood in order to predict future changes in parameters such as temperature, currents, winds, salinity, surface waves and mixing, which are important drivers of ecosystem parameters like productivity. Furthermore, the warming Arctic causes changes in the ocean and atmosphere that can influence clouds, weather and climate in the Arctic region and beyond. Understanding these processes is important for many societal concerns, including those critical to Arctic countries like marine infrastructure and resource development, and industries and communities across the Northern hemisphere. The session proposes to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines and projects focused on the Arctic Ocean. Particular interest is in high-resolution Arctic climate change projections, related to sea ice, cloud dynamics, freshwater release, tracer transport, circulation and ocean dynamics (temperature, waves, currents, etc.) and relevant ecosystem studies. Overall, the session aims to enhance the scientific community understanding of the state of knowledge around the influence of the Arctic Ocean on climate change, and provide a forum to discuss future research needs.
...
Annica Ekman | Stockholm University
Marius Årthun | University of Bergen
William Perrie | Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Canada
Rapid changes in Arctic sea ice are impacting marine resources and industries, coastal Arctic environments, and large-scale ocean and atmosphere circulations. Physically, this is being manifest as a reduction in the extent of multi-year sea ice, a thinning of the ice cover, a warming and freshening of the Arctic Ocean, enhanced mixing in the ocean and atmosphere and enhanced coupling within the ocean-ice-atmosphere system; these physical variables are leading to cascading changes in Arctic Ocean ecosystems. This session will highlight results from recent field campaigns and models studies that investigate this rapidly evolving system and provide new understanding of its impacts and consequences.
Amy Solomon | NOAA, USA
Heidimarie Kassens | GEOMAR, Germany
William Perrie | Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Canada
Closed on December 10, 2020