Arctic/SubArtic Climate Change

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Striking climate change is occurring in the Arctic and subArctic region. Separate analyses of atmosphere, ocean and fresh-water/cryosphere all reveal an increasing hydrologic cycle, sea- ice retreat, accelerated incursion of Atlantic waters, decreasing subpolar salinity and increased penetration of Atlantic storms over the past 30 years. Realization that both natural and human- induced climate change tend to focus on high northern latitudes, an international program known as ASOF (Arctic-SubArctic Ocean Flux) has been developed. European and Russian contributions are grouped as 'ASOF-East' while contributions from the US, Canada, Greenland and Japan are grouped as 'ASOF-West.' This is a proposal to support coordination, administration and synthesis of ASOF-West. Intellectual merit. Climate research is one of the broadest of all scientific enterprises. It involves the physics of ocean/atmosphere circulation, yet with impacts of chemistry and biology and, over time, geology. Beyond these domains, climate research involves a deep set of dynamical principles of physics. While .theoretical. climate studies are not numerous, they provide essential underpinning for the inexact activity of numerical modelling, and for the interpretation of the many and diverse observations. Broader impacts. The ASOF program impacts many aspects of high-latitude climate, and global climate. The evolving changes in our ocean, atmosphere biosphere are of central concern, because they express the changing habitability of Earth. The proposed work will also contribute to the training and education of graduate students, and of a much larger audience interested in Arctic change, global climate, and the future of the physical and biological world. New technologies being brought to bear in this research (new satellite sensors, autonomous undersea vehicles) provide many connections with the larger community of technically literate people, and act as a point of interest for teaching the public about climate and environment.