Arctic Data at EOL

Archive Description

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding polar processes for climate and global change. ARCSS is the only element of the U.S. Global Change Research Program specifically concerned with the arctic region. By focusing on understanding Arctic processes in great detail, investigators are better able to characterize global changes through the improvement of global-scale models and other research tools.

The primary ARCSS data are archived at the National Center for Atmospheric Research/Earth Observing Laboratory (NCAR/EOL). In 2008 the ARCSS data archived at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) were transferred to the NCAR/EOL archive.

Archive Related Links

Archive Description

The Bering Sea Project incorporates the BEST and BSIERP data archives. The Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) project is a multi-year, interdisciplinary program to develop an end-to-end mechanistic understanding of how climate change will affect the marine ecosystems of the eastern Bering Sea, the continued use of their resources, and the social, economic and cultural sustainability of the people who depend on them. BEST is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs (OPP).

The Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP) focuses on understanding trophic interactions among colony-based foragers, hot spot foragers, pelagic forage species, pelagic predators and benthic predators. Hypotheses are tested in a linked set of spatially explicit, competing models that connect climate scenarios, physical and biological oceanographic models, a lower and upper trophic level ecosystem model and economic and management models. BSIERP is administered by the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), Anchorage, Alaska.

Archive Related Links

Project Description

An international intercomparison of 5 regional model simulations in the Arctic will be conducted using a common forcing dataset. The Arctic Regional Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ARCMIP) will focus on the SHEBA year. The rationale for selecting this period is that high quality data are available from SHEBA, the ARM Barrow site, aircraft observations and several satellite remote sensing. In addition, extensive data are available from the Mackenzie GEWEX Study (MAGS), a series of large-scale hydrological and related atmospheric and land-atmosphere studies to be conducted within the Mackenzie Basin in Canada. Each of the modeling groups will focus on a different aspect of the model intercomparison, but there are some broader goals which can be addressed by this project including better understanding of processes and process parameterizations, model uncertainty and global climate model circulation simulations.

Project Related Links

Project Description

The Land-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions (LAII) program is part of the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). LAII has overall goals of understanding how the feedback processes within Arctic systems affect global climate change, as well as how these changes affect and are affected by human activities. The overall goal of LAII Arctic Transitions in the Land-Atmosphere System (ATLAS) program is to determine the geographical patterns and controls over climate-land surface exchange (mass and energy) and to develop reasonable scenarios of future change in the Arctic System.

Project Related Links

Project Description

The Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) project is a multi-year, interdisciplinary program to develop an end-to-end mechanistic understanding of how climate change will affect the marine ecosystems of the eastern Bering Sea, the continued use of their resources, and the social, economic and cultural sustainability of the people who depend on them.

BEST is motivated by the realization that the Bering Sea is in the midst of significant, interrelated physical and biological change that may impact the region's carrying capacity and productivity, the sustainability of fish and shellfish stocks of great economic value for the nation, and the livelihoods of Native communities and fishers. These changes involve climate forcing, physical properties and processes in the ocean, and biological responses from the level of the physiology of individual organisms to the structure and function of entire ecosystems.

BEST is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs (OPP).

Project Related Links

Project Description

The Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP) focuses on understanding trophic interactions among: colony-based foragers, hot spot foragers, pelagic forage species, pelagic predators and benthic predators.

Hypotheses are tested in a linked set of spatially explicit, competing models that connect climate scenarios, physical and biological oceanographic models, a lower and upper trophic level ecosystem model and economic and management models. Models forecast changes in abundance of pelagic piscivores in response to changes in predators and prey and attendant economic and management consequences. Two-way connections between the program and communities, stakeholders and the region's body of local and traditional knowledge are enabled by outreach, education and community involvement projects. Products of the project enable testing and improved understanding of effects of climate change and management actions on the Bering Sea ecosystem.

BSIERP is administered by the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), Anchorage, Alaska.

Project Related Links

Project Description

The International Tundra Experiment, ITEX, was established in 1990 as a MAB-NSN initiative (Man-And-the-Biosphere, Northern Sciences Network). Since then the programme has grown rapidly and is today one of the most active international field programmes in arctic ecology. The purpose of ITEX is to monitor the performance of plant species and communities on a circumpolar basis in undisturbed habitats with and without environmental manipulations. At present, there are over twenty active ITEX field sites throughout the circumpolar Arctic and in some alpine areas, operated by field parties from thirteen countries. The basic experiment is a temperature enhancement manipulation, where the field mean surface temperature is increased by 2-3 degrees C to simulate the climate at the middle of the next century according to the forecast from the GCMs (General Circulation Models). Most of the results generated within ITEX so far relate to the response of single species, but from the field season of 1995 the experimentation was scaled up to include community-level responses. There are also ITEX research efforts dealing with plant phenotypic plasticity and quantitative genetics of some of the target species.

Project Related Links

Project Description

The Western Arctic Shelf Basin Interactions (SBI) project is a multi-year, interdisciplinary program to investigate the impact of global change on physical, biological and geochemical processes over the Chukcki and Beaufort Sea shelf basin region in the Western Arctic Ocean.

Objectives:

The goal of the SBI program is to provide a clear understanding of the physical and biogeochemical connections between the Arctic shelves, slopes, and deep basins that could be influenced by global change.

Project Related Links

Project Description

SHEBA is motivated by the large discrepancies among simulations by global climate models (GCMs) of the present and future climate in the arctic and by uncertainty about the impact of the arctic on climate change. These problems arise from an incomplete understanding of the physics of vertical energy exchange within the ocean/ice/atmosphere system. To address this problem, the SHEBA project is focused on enhancing understanding of the key processes that determine ice albedo feedback in the arctic pack ice and on a applying this knowledge to improve climate modeling.

Objectives:

The scientific objectives of SHEBA included: (1) To develop accurate physical and mathematical relationships between the state of the ice cover and albedo, for any given incident short-wave radiation (2) To determine how the state of the ice cover changes in response to forcing from the atmosphere and the ocean (3) To relate the surface forcing to conditions within the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers (4) To extend the relationships determined in Objectives 1-3 from local scales to the aggregate scales suitable for climate models (5) To establish a basic data set suitable for developing and testing climate models that incorporate the processes SHEBA is proposing to study.

Project Related Links