A mobile exhibition for DAMOCLES
Posted on 17.02.2006 • in Projects
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The DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) project is an integrated ice-atmosphere-ocean monitoring and forecasting system designed for observing, understanding and quantifying climate change in the Arctic. An advanced observing system will be developed and deployed, providing for the first time, synoptic, continuous and long-term monitoring of the lower atmosphere, sea ice and upper ocean.
DAMOCLES represents the integrated efforts of 45 European research institutions including 8 SMEs distributed among 12 European countries including Russia, and coordinated with the USA, Canada and Japan.
As a DAMOCLES partner, the IPF is developing in 2006 a mobile exhibition to communicate to the wider public what DAMOCLES is doing and why. The exhibition will be available for use in connection with polar information events held in European countries during the International Polar Year 2007-08 (IPY).
The Arctic over the last 2-3 decades has warmed more than other regions of the world, and the sea-ice cover has decreased significantly in the same period. A first-order scientific and societal question is whether the Arctic perennial sea-ice will disappear in a few decades (or even faster, as predicted by some state-of-art climate models). DAMOCLES is specifically concerned with the potential for a significantly reduced sea ice cover, and the impacts this might have on the environment and on human activities, both regionally and globally.
The ultimate goal of DAMOCLES is to lengthen the lead-time of extreme climate changes predicted to occur in the Arctic within this century according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and thus to improve the ability of society to mitigate for its impacts. The changing Arctic climate is already having and will continue to have a wide range of impacts on human activities, such as fisheries, shipping, offshore oil and gas production at regional, national and local levels.
DAMOCLES will provide the largest ever effort to assemble simultaneous observations of the full Arctic atmosphere-ice-ocean system. The observational time period coincides with the International Polar Year and will represent a monumental contribution from the European community.
DAMOCLES will develop new technology to obtain observations of key variables in the atmosphere, the sea ice and in the ocean. This is necessary as the Arctic is a harsh environment, and the ice cover prohibits the use of many conventional instruments, data transfer methods and calibration schemes.
