The full list of projects contains the entire database hosted on this portal, across the available directories. The projects and activities (across all directories/catalogs) are also available by country of origin, by geographical region, or by directory.
The objective of our work with arctic terrestrial plants and with algae is to study the range of climate adaptation as is expressed in special ultrastructure of cells and tissues, in photosynthetic metabolism, in antioxidative and sun screen compounds under a cold and reduced PAR / UV-B environment (climate different to alpine conditions). This is a comparison of ecophysiological processes already worked out mainly from high alpine plants, which live periodically under stronger cold and under different light regimes, especially higher UV-B and PAR irradiation. We want to find out, whether adaptations found in some alpine organisms occur similarly in polar forms.
The main objective is to study the importance of aerosol particles on climate change and on human health. Particularly, the focus will be on the effect of biogenic aerosols on global aerosol load. During the recent years it has become obvious that homogeneous nucleation events of fresh aerosol particles take frequently place in the atmosphere, and that homogeneous nucleation and subsequent growth have significant role in determining atmospheric aerosol load. In order to be able to understand this we need to perform studies on formation and growth of biogenic aerosols including a) formation of their precursors by biological activities, b) related micrometeorology, c) atmospheric chemistry, and d) atmospheric phase transitions. Our approach covers both experimental (laboratory and field experiments) and theoretical (basic theories, simulations, model development) approaches.
The objective of the project was the investigation of englacial melt water channels of Svalbard glaciers in order to find in situ organic material within glacier caves. Specified organic material found beneath glaciers was meant for radiocarbon dating and creation of reliable geochronologies of glacier recessions with considerable smaller glacier termini than present on Svalbard. First radiocarbon dating results ever from organic material found under a glacier’s bottom of glacier Longyearbreen will be published this year. The different moss species ranging from Tomentypnum nitens, Sanionia uncinata, Distichium spp., Syntrichia ruralis gave ages between 1900 and 1100 cal yr BP (Humlum et al., 2004).
The project IOANA proposes to better understand the intimate coupling between ozone mixing ratios and particulate nitrate isotopic characteristics. Ozone Depletion Events which occur in Arctic coastal locations shortly after sunrise are a subject of interest per se (scientifically challenging for two decades) but also provide a context in which ozone mixing ratios are highly variable, enabling to characterize the dynamic of correlation and process studies with a resolution of a day. This is a first step towards the use of the isotope tool in reconstructions of the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere. This programme is a preparation of the IPY-OASIS project and propose to coodinate a set of collaborations than will be effective duing the International Polar Year.
The Nuuk-Basic project aims to establish a climate monitoring programme on the westcoast of Greenland. During two workshops, one being in Nuuk with field survey, framework for a future climate monitoring programme will be established. The programme builds on the concept and institutions already performing climate monitoring in NE-Greenland through ZERO (Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations).
The ZERO database contains all validated data from the Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations Basic Programmes (ClimateBasis, GeoBasis, BioBasis and MarinBasis). The purpose of the project is to run and update the database with new validated data after each succesfull field season. Data will be available for the public through the Zackenberg homepage linking to the NERI database. The yearly update is dependent on that each Basis programme delivers validated data in the proscribed format.
The central objectives of the proposed ATMAS project are: to quantify the photo-chemically triggered NOx and HONO re-emission fluxes from permanently and seasonally snow-covered surfaces in the Arctic near Ny-Ålesund, to quantify the sources of NO3 in these snow-covered surfaces. In detail, the following scientific objectives of ATMAS can be distinguished: 1. to quantify atmospheric gradient fluxes of HNO3, HONO, particulate nitrogen compounds, and nitrogen in precipitation (snow and rain) above snow surfaces; 2. to quantify the emission of NOx and HONO from the snow pack as atmospheric gradient fluxes 3. to formulate an influx-outflow relationship that can be used in dependence on the snow type for (photo-)chemical atmospheric process models. The results of this research may be expanded to a regional (European) or global scale, to suggest how the NOx and HONO re-emission process and its consequences can be included into regional emission, dispersion and deposition models used in Europe.
During the last decade the concern regarding environmental effects of the offshore industry has shifted from effects of drilling discharges on benthic communities, towards a stronger focus on the water column and effects on the pelagic ecosystem. At the same time, oil and gas development is expanding in the Norwegian and Russian sectors of the Barents Sea. In this regard, a project has been initiated to look at responses of especially Calanus spp. and other copepod species to long-term, sublethal exposure to selected offshore discharges and discharge components, as well as accidental oil spills. Calanus spp. is ecologically the most important zooplankton species along the Norwegian shelf and in the Barents Sea. A laboratory based facility for culture through several generations is being developed through this project. In addition, the impact of oil compounds on the cold-water and arctic Calanus species-complex will be examined by carrying out a series of laboratory (some at Ny Ålesund) and ship based experiments. The response parameters will include both behavioral (feeding, mate finding, avoidance) and physiological (mortality, egg production, development rates, oxygen consumption and assimilation efficiency) parameters. The ultimate outcome of this research is expected to be a supporting instrument for ecological risk assessment of offshore discharges, which is highly relevant both to the North Sea, the mid-Norway shelf and the Barents Sea.
Englacial draining on Kongsvegen
In a context of global change, arctic ecosystems are exposed to deep modifications not only of the biology and ecology of endemic species but also of the interactions they may have with an increasing number of introduced species. This project attempts to assess in Svalbard, the impacts of global changes on aphids. These phytophagous insects are particularly relevant organisms for studies on the effects of global warming and biological invasion because 1) of their extreme sensitivity to micro- and macro- changes due to their spectacular rate of increase and phenotypic plasticity and 2) of their colonizing capacity conferred by their parthenogenetic mode of reproduction and their dispersal potential
The project EPOPEE is embedded in the international project ASTAR to study direct and indirect climate effects of aerosols and clouds in the Arctic. The particular goals of the project EPOPEE are to experimentally characterize the ice phase in Arctic clouds (including the ice phase) in situ, to study the aerosol-cloud as well as cloud-radiation interactions, and to develop adequate methods to validate remote sensing cloud parameters. In 2004 the project EPOPEE is mainly organized around in situ observations of detailed microphysical and optical cloud properties onboard the Polar-2 aircraft during the transition from polluted Arctic haze (observed especially in late winter, early spring months) to clean summer aerosol conditions. The transition from Arctic haze to clean summer conditions is quite sharp (a large amount of aerosols coming from Eurasian industrial areas accumulate over the Arctic and cover the Arctic by a layer of a smog-like haze of the size of the continent of Africa) due to a radical change in atmospheric transport patterns and is, thus, easy to identify. During Arctic summer, the high latitudes are then more or less “protected” from long-range transport of air masses from lower latitudes. The principal scientific objective of the project EPOPEE in 2004 will focus on studying the aerosol-cloud interactions with particular attention given to the ice phase nucleation in Arctic mixed-phase clouds. The interpretation of the instrumental observations will broadly benefit from a very close cooperation with the LaMP modelling group for theoretically coupling small-scale processes (cloud particle nucleation) with meso-scale dynamics. Furthermore, the project will focus on cloud-radiation interaction and the development of adequate methods to validate cloud parameters retrieved from remote sensing techniques. Therein, we will experimentally answer the question of how the different ice crystal shapes govern the scattering phase function of respective crystals. Moreover, the in situ cloud measurements will allow to develop an adequate strategy for the interpretation of remote sensing data from a depolarisation Lidar onboard the same aircraft (Polar-2).
Mapping and monitoring of the snow cover with use of satellitte born optical instruments for (1) direct use of observations of climate change and (2) use of observations in climate modelling. Measurements of the snows spectral reflectance and other physical properties.
The aim is a better understanding of the impact of contemporary climatic change (posterior to Little Ice Age) on plant dynamics and the morphodynamic processes active at the glacial margins in polar environments. The selected research field is constituted of the Brøgger Peninsula, where erosion assessments will be evaluated for various processes (frost weathering, runoff, biological weathering, …).
This technological program aims to collect permanent informations on local meteorology and aerosols particles at Corbel Station, Svalbard, 6km east of Ny alesund. 78 54 N, 12 07 E Programme 2004 – 2005 April 2004 : Prticmle counter installation and collect datas from meteo Station. Soar cels will be also instlled at the station to power these systems.
This technological program aims to collect permanent informations on local meteorology and aerosols particles at Corbel Station, Svalbard, 6km east of Ny alesund. 78 54 N, 12 07 E Programme 2004 – 2005 April 2004 : Prticmle counter installation and collect datas from meteo Station. Soar cels will be also instlled at the station to power these systems.
GPS has become an important tool both in navigation and in precise point positioning. One of the nuicance parameters limiting the accuracy of point determination is the water vapor content of the troposphere. On the other hand meteorologists are interested in the wet component of the troposphere as a valuable tool for Numerical Weather Prediction. Therefore GPS offers a low cost monitoring of water vapor with high temporal resolution. We make use of continuous measurements of the GPS/GLONASS reference station network in Austria, which currently consists of about 30 sites with distances ranging from 50 km to 120 km. We calculate the zenith wet delays for a period of 2 months (February and March 2002). Subsequently the results are compared to contributions of different processing centers of the COST-716 project ?Exploitation of Ground Based GPS for Climate and NWP? and with zenith path delay estimates provided by the IGS. As meteorologists need the water vapor within less than two hours, special attention is paid to the availability, reliability and especially to the quality of the satellite orbits used for the network calculations.
The goal of this project is to find the relationships between the UV solar spectral irradiances sampled at ground level in different cloudy situations. This information will be useful for a double target: to a better tuning of the UV Green model outputs and to evaluate the effects of the solar UV radiation on biological target. A second target is to have information about the cloud effect on computing the Umkehr model output (vertical Ozone profiles). This goal will be carried out installing in Ny-Ålesund a spectrophotometer Brewer to sample the UV irradiance synchronous with an automatic photo-camera taking pictures of sky. An analytical study of the two kinds of data allows finding the relationships searched.
The aim of this project is to study the physical oceanography of the sea in the area where Kongsbreen glacier get in touch with the sea in the inner part of Kongsfjord. In particular the project aims: to characterise temperature and salinity of water masses in the inner part of Kongsfjord close to Kongsbreen Glacier to characterise major fresh water outflow from Kongsbreen glaciers to the sea in the inner part of the fiord to collect time series if seawater currents in-out from the inner part, temperature and salinity patterns for one year from summer 2001 to summer 2002. to collect a one year time series of sea level changes by an automatic self recording depth gauges deployed close to the base.
The general objective of this research concerns the quantitative and qualitative study of particulate matter retained in natural (sea-ice and sediment) and artificial (sediment traps) traps in order to determine the main origin (autochtonous and allochtonous) and the relative importance of different fractions of particulate matter and to follow their fate in the environment. To quantify the autochtonous origin of particulate matter, primary production, nutrient uptake, biomass distribution, phytoplankton community structure and fluxes in the first levels of the trophic chain will be investigated. Studies will be conducted in the sea-ice environment and in the water column and compared to the particle fluxes measured both in the water, using sediment traps and in the sediment, by radiometric chronology, in order to estimate the different contribution of these habitats to carbon export to the bottom. The zooplankton will be identified and counted and primary production, nutrient uptake and phytoplankton dynamics will be related to hydrological structure and nutrient availability in the environment. The Kongsfjord results particularly suitable for the main objective of this research as it is influenced by important inputs of both atmospheric (eolic and meteroric) and glacial origin and is characterised by a complex hydrological situation which may promote autochtonous productive processes, thus determining important particulate fluxes.
The project aims at producing an ENVISAT-1 mission-long monitoring of the inorganic chlorine (Cly) and fluorine (Fy) loading in the Earth’s middle atmosphere, based on FTIR vertical column abundance measurements of the key related species HCl, ClONO2, HF and COF2 at 10 ground-based NDSC sites distributed worldwide. These Cly and Fy inventories will be completed with ClO and OClO measurements expected as Level-2 products from ENVISAT-1. The column abundances of the source gases CFC-12 and HCFC-22 will be used to place the stratospheric Cly and Fy evolution in perspective with the more complete sets of organic chlorinated and fluorinated compounds measured at the ground by the in situ networks NOAA-CMDL and AGAGE. The assimilation of the retrieved geophysical data bases will be performed through 3-D model calculations incorporating physical, chemical and transport characteristics of the global atmosphere.