GreenArc Icecamp
Climate and environmental changes in the Arctic Ocean
north of Greenland
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Background

The region north of Greenland is due to its inaccessibility a largely unexplored part of the Arctic Ocean in terms of sea-ice, oceanography, present and past climate, and ecological as well as bio-geochemical conditions. With the large changes currently observed in the sea-ice cover of the Arctic Ocean, and its oceanographic patterns (e.g. Steele and Boyd 1998) and climatic conditions, there is a need to secure a spectrum of in situ data all across the Arctic Ocean to provide a "snapshot" of the present conditions that may serve as a baseline for future investigations - which is the aim of IPY.

The projects will provide information of the on-going climate change in the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland through a multi-disciplinary field program based on a drifting sea ice camp between Peary Land and the North Pole in April 2009. This region is a very inaccessible region of the Arctic, which has only in the summer of 2007 for the first time been briefly visited by an icebreaker expedition (Swedish/Danish LOMROG cruise, based on Swedish ice breaker "Oden" and Russian nuclear ice breaker "50 let Pobedy", as part of the Danish Continental Shelf Project).

The camp will be located initially at the western fringe of the Morris Jessup Rise at approximately 84.45°N, 40°W and operated for a period of approximately 15 days. By setting up the necessary infrastructure for research associated with the camp we will attract participation from a number of international parties. A number of institutions including the Univ. of Cambridge and the Scottish Association of Marine Science, (SAMS) have already expressed firm interest in being part of the camp research team. The establishment of a cost-effective ice camp is possible primarily due to cooperation with US and Canada for access, equipment and flights. We plan to establish the ice camp following the principles of the successful EU GreenIce camp in May 2004, a British-Danish-German-Norwegian-Canadian cooperation, which proved that valuable science can be achieved from a short term, low-cost ice camp, by coordinating resources from many parties.