Barents Sea: projects/activities

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Directory entires that have specified Barents Sea as one of the geographic regions for the project/activity and are included in the AMAP, ENVINET, SAON and SEARCH directories. Note that the list of regions is not hierarchical, and there is no relation between regions (e.g. a record tagged with Nunavut may not be tagged with Canada). To see the full list of regions, see the regions list. To browse the catalog based on the originating country (leady party), see the list of countries.

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Displaying: 1 - 8 of 8
1. Arctic Oceanographic Observations (AREX) (AREX)

Since 1988 the regular summer hydrographic observations in the Nordic Seas and Fram Strait have been collected by the Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences (IOPAS). Observational activities were carried out under several national programs, in the frames of EU projects VEINS, ASOF-N and DAMOCLES and within Polish-Norwegian cooperation in the AWAKE project. The main objectives are:  to study the long-term variability of water mass distribution, their physical and chemical properties and different pathways in the Nordic Seas;  to investigate the Atlantic water (AW) circulation in the Nordic Seas and its inflow into the Arctic Ocean;  to recognize the possible feedbacks between the Atlantic water variability and local and global climate changes.

Hydrography Oceanography
2. RADNOR - Radioactive dose assessment improvements for the Nordic marine environment: Transport and environmental impact of technetium 99 (99Tc) in marine ecosystems

Radioactivity in the Arctic environment is a central topic within environmental pollution issues. Increased discharges of technetium-99 (99Tc) from the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant Sellafield to the Irish Sea has caused public concerns in Norway. This project (acronym “RADNOR”) includes model and monitoring assessments and improvements, assessment of current and novel abiotic and biotic dose parameters and dose calculations and use of realistic climatic background scenarios in order to assess corresponding consequences for transport of radioactive pollutants. RADNOR consists of three main components: part 1, the determination of levels and time series of 99Tc in benthic and pelagic food webs; part 2, containing working packages on improvements to the understanding of site-specific and time-dependent sediment-water interactions (KD), kinetics of accumulation (CF) and body distribution in marine organisms, including contaminated products for the alginate industry and part 3, dealing with model hindcasts and observations for spreading of 99Tc from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant during the 1990s and improvement of the NRPA dose assessment box model. From the model outputs, doses to man and environment will be calculated resulting in a valuable database for use within environmental management and for decision makers.

distribution coefficients (KD) RADNOR Long-range transport Spatial trends Contaminant transport concentration factors (CF) Radionuclides Modelling Oceanography Arctic Food webs Sediments Temporal trends Human intake Technetium 99
3. Monitoring climate variability in the Barents Sea

This is an ongoing activity for monitoring variability in temperature and salinity in Barents Sea

Climate variability Climate change Oceanography
4. Monitoring the Atlantic Inflow toward the Arctic (MAIA)

The overall objective of MAIA is to develop an inexpensive, reliable system based on coastal sea-level data for monitoring the inflows of Atlantic Water to the northern seas. Available observation systems, including stan-dard tidal stations, will be used to obtain transport estimates with a time resolution of less than a week and show that the method is generic and can be applied to a similar monitoring of other regions.

Long-range transport Climate Sea ice Ice Oceanography Arctic Ocean currents
5. Polar Exchange at the Sea Surface (POLES)

Our broad area of enquiry is the role of polar regions in the global energy and water cycles, and the atmospheric, oceanic and sea ice processes that determine that role. The primary importance of our investigation is to show how these polar processes relate to global climate.

Atmospheric processes polar cloud dynamics ice dynamics surface radiation and cloud forcing Climate variability Climate Sea ice Climate change surface heat and mass balance polar atmospheric processes ice-ocean models arctic climate Modelling Ice Oceanography Arctic SEARCH Atmosphere Ocean currents cryosphere ice thickness
6. The Role of Polar Oceans in Contemporary Climate Change

Our central geophysical objective is to determine how sea ice and the polar oceans respond to and influence the large-scale circulation of the atmosphere. Our primary technical objective is to determine how best to incorporate satellite measurements in an ice/ocean model.

Atmospheric processes ice dynamics mass balance of Arctic sea ice Geophysics Climate variability Climate Sea ice Climate change freshwater balance of the Arctic Ocean polar atmospheric processes ice-ocean models arctic climate Modelling Ice Oceanography Arctic SEARCH Atmosphere Ocean currents ice thickness
7. Polar Ice Prediction System Version 3.0 (PIPS 3)

To develop the next-generation Navy operational ice thickness and movement model.

Shelf seas Hydrography Modelling Ice Oceanography Arctic SEARCH Data management Atmosphere Ocean currents
8. The high latitude oceans in the climate system, with special emphasis on their role in the global carbon cycle

The scientific objectives of this project is to add information that helps elucidate the role of the Arctic Mediterranean Seas (Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas) in the climatic system of the Northern Europe. More specifically it has the following aims: - To assess the heat and carbon dioxide fluxes over the air-sea interface in the Barents Sea and elucidate the effect this has on the formation of Arctic Ocean intermediate waters and associated carbon fluxes. - To assess the temporal variability of the fresh water distribution in the Arctic Ocean, both river runoff and sea ice melt, and the affect this has on the outflow of fresh water to the regions of open ocean deep water formation (the Greenland, Iceland and Labrador Seas). - To assess the mixing of upper and intermediate waters along the East Greenland Current that gives the properties of the overflow into the North Atlantic Ocean and thus add to the driving of the thermohaline circulation. This also contributes to the sequestering of anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

Shelf seas Hydrography Climate change Oceanography Arctic Geochemistry