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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.
We propose a project that 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 May 2008 or April 2009 (dependent on the confirmation
of funding and logistics). 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 85°N,
35°W and operated for a period of approximately 20 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 Finnish Institute of Marine Research (FIMR), Alfred
Wegener Institute, Germany (AWI) and Univ. of Cambridge/Scottish Association of Marine Science,
(UC/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.
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