These observations was originally funded through IPY projects (iAOOS-Norway and IPYTHORPEX), they are now maintained by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The observations at Bjørnøya started April 2008, Jan Mayen October 2008 and Hopen is scheduled 2009.
Objectives are:
Provision of algorithm tuning and validation data for EUMETSAT OSISAF radiative fluxes products (http://osisaf.met.no/).
Provision of validation data for numerical weather prediction models.
Generation of time series for use in time series analysis of atmospheric radiative conditions.
Validation data for studying ocean and atmosphere heat exchange processes using bulk parameterisations.