Publication Abstract

The integrated Arctic Ocean Observing System (iAOOS): an AOSB-CliC Observing Plan for the International Polar Year

R.R. Dickson

To many investigators, the polar reservoirs of ice and freshwater (including the ice-mass of Greenland) represent the key to the polar role in climate. And the climatic impact of Arctic change is still centred on the fate of the Arctic sea-ice and the climatic and social effects of its disappearance. Many state-of-the-art climate models predict that the perennial sea-ice of the Arctic Ocean will disappear in late summer within a few decades or less. Important questions remain as to whether this expectation is justified, and if so when this change will take place and what effect it will have on climate on a regional-to-global scale. Such a dramatic physical affront to the ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere system in high northern latitudes, corresponding to a change in surface albedo from more than 0.8 to less than 0.3 over a surface larger than Europe, is bound to have radical effects on human activities with immediate impacts on the indigenous inhabitants of the circum-Arctic region and the ecosystem on which they depend, and with widespread effects on socio-economic activity on a hemispheric scale.

Reference:

R.R. Dickson (2006) The integrated Arctic Ocean Observing System (iAOOS): an AOSB-CliC Observing Plan for the International Polar Year. Oceanologia, 48(1): 5-21