To edit or add records to any of the catalogs, log in or create an account.
Directory entires that have specified Svalbard 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.
It is also possible to browse and query the full list of projects.
National Environmental Monitoring in Sweden in the "Air" programme. The objective of the project is to follow climate-changing gases and particles and which effects they could have on the climate of earth. To understand and assess the human effect on the climate, regionally and globally, the atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases are monitored. The project aims follow: (i) detecting long-term trends in the carbon dioxide level, as well as trends in the amount or composition of aerosols in the background atmosphere; (ii) provide a basis to study the processes that control the aerosol life cycle from their formation through aging and transformation, until being removed from the atmosphere; (iii) provide a basis to study the processes (sources, sinks, and transport pathways) that control the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; (iv) contribute to the global network of stations that perform continous measurements of atmospheric particles and trace gases to determine their effect on the earths radiation balance and interaction with clouds and climate.
Arctic study of trophospheric aerosol, clouds and radiation
The main objective is to quantify the levels of air pollution in the artctic, and to document any changes in the exposures. It includes the necessary components to address impacts on ecosystems, human health, materials and climate change.
The study of the OH layer between about 80 to 95 km altitude reveals important infomation about the mesopause region. An interesting information, which can be drawn from the relaxation of chemically excited OH molecules, is the rotational temperature of this layer, which forms the boundary between mesosphere and thermosphere. Under certain circumstances, the rotational temperature of the OH molecules can be related to the ambient temperature of the air at the mesopause region. The OH molecules are formed by the reaction of O3 and H2, which leaves the OH molecules at a highly excited vibrational state. The course of the deexcitation is still subject of discussion and will be studied using a FTIR spectrometer, which is able to observe the transistions reching from the higlhy excited state to the ground state of the OH molecule. The ground state of the OH molecule can be observed by LIDAR. A method to do this will be developed in a project at the Universität Bremen in cooperation with the AWI Potsdam.
The project aims at establishing a long-term Arctic-Antarctic network of monitoring stations for atmospheric monitoring of anthropogenic pollution. Based upon the long and excellent experiences with different scientific groups performing air monitoring within the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), an expanded network will be established including all AMAP stations and all major Antarctic “year-around” research stations. As an integrated project within the “International Polar Year 2007-08” initiative, the ATMOPOL co-operation intend to • Establish a long-term coordinated international Arctic-Antarctic contaminant programme. • Develop and implement a joint sampling and monitoring strategy as an official guideline for all participating stations. • Support bi-polar international atmospheric research with high-quality data on atmospheric long-range transport of contaminants (sources, pathways and fate). • Support future risk assessment of contaminants for Polar Regions based on effects of relevant contamination levels and polar organisms Based upon the well-established experiences of circum-Arctic atmospheric contaminant monitoring in the Arctic under the AMAP umbrella, a bi-polar atmospheric contaminant network will be established and maintained. In conjunction with the polar network of atmospheric monitoring stations for air pollution, surface-based and satellite instrumentation will be utilised to provide the characterization of the Arctic atmospheric-water-ice cycle. Together with numerical weather prediction and chemical transport model calculations, simultaneous measurements of pollutants at various locations in the Arctic and Antarctic will enhance our understanding of chemical transport and distribution as well as their long-term atmospheric trends. In addition to investigating the importance of atmospheric transport of pollutants an understanding of the transference and impact of these pollutants on both terrestrial and marine environments will be sought. A secretariat and a “scientific project board” will be established. During this initial phase of the project (2006), a guideline on priority target compounds, sampling strategies, equipment and instrumentation, analytical requirements, as well as quality assurance protocols (including laboratory intercalibration exercises) will be developed and implemented. The ATMOPOL initiative aims to address highly relevant environmental change processes and, thus, will strive to answering the following scientific questions: • How does climate change influence the atmospheric long-range transport of pollutants? • Are environmental scientists able to fill the gaps in international pollution inventories and identification of possible sources for atmospheric pollution in Polar Regions? • What are the differences in transport pathways and distribution patterns of various atmospheric pollutants between Arctic and Antarctic environments? Why are there such differences? What is the final fate of atmospherically transported pollutants and how does this impact on the environment and indigenous people?In order to understand the underlying atmospheric chemistry of pollution, e.g. atmospheric mercury deposition events, routine surface measurements of UV radiation as well as campaign related measurements of UV radiation profiles will also be included.The project will establish a cooperative network on atmospheric contaminant monitoring in Polar Regions far beyond the IPY 2007/08 period and is, thus, planned as an “open-end” programme. All produced data will be available for all participating institutions for scientific purposes as basis for joint publications and reports from the ATMOPOL database to be developed.
This technological program aims to get a better view of the Corbel site quality (78 54 N, 12 07 E, Svalbard close to Ny Alesunsd) for atmospheric chemistry. Nox and SO2 samplers are deployed on 16 places on a 4 km2 area around the Station (79°N, Svalbard), protected from snowscooters activity. The influence of Ny Alesund village is also studied. Programme 2004 April 2004 : poles installation and samplers deployment on the 16 stations; analysis will be made by CNR.
The 2003 field activity will be mainly dedicated to coring activity which includes: 1. the sampling of snow and ice cores from a Ny-Ålesund nearby glacier (midre Lovenbreen). 2. the collection of near coast (Kongsfjorden) and lakes sediments (maximum under pack depth 30 m). Sampling collection of ice and sediment cores will be performed using a portable, electric operated, sampling corer. The transport of all materials up to each sampling station should be performed with snowcats.
Objective: to determine how solar activity influences temperatures, winds, electric currents and minor constituents and to allow possible anthropogenic influences to be determined. Uses primarily measurements by the ESRAD and EISCAT radars, plus ground-based and balloon-borne measurements of atmospheric electric fields and currents.
In situ measurements in the stratosphere shall be carried out by means of different balloon soundings. The main goal is the investigation of aerosols in the tropopause-region and in the stratosphere during wintertime. Because generation of aerosols strongly depends on water vapour content, also water vapour will be measured.
The general objective of the project is to increase the understanding of the Mercury Depletion Events occuring at Arctic sunrise and to quantify the input of mercury to polar ecosystems during this events.
Monitoring solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling processes from the aurora.
ASTAR, Arctic Study of Tropospheric Aerosol and Radiation is a a joint German (AWI Potsdam) - Japanese (NIPR Tokyo) campaign with participation from NASA LaRC Hampton, VA (USA). In addition to AWI, NIPR, and NASA LaRC the following institutions contributed to the project: Hokkaido University (Japan), Nagoya University (Japan), Norwegian Polar Institute Tromsoe/ Longyearbyen (Norway), NILU Kjeller (Norway), MISU Stockholm (Sweden), NOAA-CMDL Boulder, CO (USA) and Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy Katlenburg-Lindau (Germany). The campaign is based on simultaneous airborne measurements from the German research aircraft POLAR 4 and ground-based measurements in Ny-Ålesund. The main goals of the project are - to measure aerosol parameters of climate relevance, like extinction coefficient, absoprtion coefficients and phase function. - to create an Arctic Aerosol Data Set for climate impact investigation by using the regional climate model HIRHAM. - to carry out comparison measurements with the SAGE II (Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment) and the ground based Raman-Lidar.
In preparation to the launch of the SAGE III experiment in March 2001, NASA and the European Union performed the SOLVE / THESEO-2000 campaign, which had three components: (i) an aircraft campaign using the NASA DC-8 and ER-2 airplanes out of Kiruna/Sweden, (ii) launches of large stratospheric research balloons from Kiruna, (iii) validation excercises for the commissioning phase of SAGE III. The German Arctic research station Koldewey in Ny-Ålesund/Spitsbergen contributes to (i), (ii), and (iii) by performing measurements of stratospheric components like ozone, trace gases, aerosols (PSCs), temperature and winds. The measurement results were transmitted quasi online to the flight planning center in Kiruna, in order to allow a better directing of the air plane flights. In addition the Koldewey-Station has been designated a validation anchor site for the SAGE III validation. The activities are organized within a NASA accepted proposal of ground-based validation support by the NDSC Primary Station at Ny-Ålesund, Spitsbergen and by a SAGE III validation working group for Ny-Ålesund. The main observation periods are from December 1999 to March 2000.
In order to get detailed vertical ozone profiles above the range of standard electrochemical ozonesondes (typically 35 km), a radiosonde together with an optical ozonesensor is launchend with a special plastic foliage balloon. The balloon payload consists of a digital radiosonde (DFM 90) using GPS for altitude measurements and a two channel filter spectrometer (optical sensor) to measure the vertical ozone distribution up to more than 40 km altitude. The ozone profiles obtained by the optical sensors will be compared with ground-based microwave and lidar ozone observations as well as with the standard balloon-borne ozone measurements with electrochemical ozone sensors.
The aim of the project is to study the properties (radiative effects, composition) of aerosols using FTIR emission spectroscopy. To determine seasonal changes in aerosol properties the measurements will be carried out year round on a weekly schedule.
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) Bi-spectral Infrared Detection (BIRD) small satellite is a technology demonstrator of new infrared push-broom sensors dedicated to recognition and quantitative characterisation of thermal processes on the Earth surface. BIRD was successfully piggy-back launched on October 22, 2001 with an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C3) into a circular sun-synchronous orbit with an altitude of 572 km and a North - South local equator crossing time at 10:30 h. Besides cameras working in the visible and near infrared spectral range there are two cameras working in the middle infrared (MIR, 3.4 – 4.2 µm) and in the thermal spectral range (TIR, 8.5 – 9.3 µm) respectively. The objective is to validate these two cameras in cooperation with the Koldewey-Station in Ny-Ålesund. Therefore meteorological and aerological data as well as radiation measuring data will be used.
The current scientific knowledge does not allow estimating accurately the surface radiative forcing caused by tropospheric aerosols and their influence on the evolution of the Earth climate. The radiative forcing depends on the optical properties of the aerosols at solar and thermal infrared wavelengths. These optical properties depend, in turn, on the chemical composition and size of the aerosols. Remote sensing with passive radiation sensors operating in the above-mentioned spectral ranges allows to measure the optical properties of the aerosols and to characterise their temporal variability. These data are needed for regional climate simulations of the Arctic, particularly for delineating the impact of the Arctic haze phenomenon. In this project, a synergetic effort will be made to obtain information about the radiative and microphysical properties of springtime arctic aerosols. Therefore, a polarisation-spectrometer for the solar spectral range, which is currently developed at the Free University of Berlin as a variant of the FUBISS spectrometer, will be operated from the surface in coincidence with the Fourier Transform InfraRed-spectrometer (FTIR) installed at Ny-Aalesund by the AWI. The former instrument measures the intensity and polarisation of the scattered solar radiation from the visible to the near-infrared. The latter measures the radiation emitted by the Atmosphere itself in the thermal infrared window region. Together, they thus provide a wealth of information about the aerosol optical properties at the interesting wavelengths (spectral optical depth, single-scattering albedo, and asymmetry factor of the phase function), which will allow inferring the aerosol microphysical properties. Complementary measurements of the aerosol microphysical properties will be provided by an aerosol volatility analyser, which is maintained by the University of Leeds and will also be brought to Ny-Aalesund. This instrument comprises a fast response scanning volatility system and an optical particle counter. From the thermal response of the aerosol number and the change in the size distribution conclusions can be inferred about the chemical composition and the state of mixing of aerosols as a function of size.
Aim of the project is to develop a cost-effective long-term European observation system for halocarbons and to predict and assess impacts of the halocarbons on the climate and on the ozone layer. Beside the routine observations within the NDSC it is planned to perform with FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) absorption measurements of CFCs (e.g. SF6, CCl2F2, CHF2Cl) and related species on much more observation days.
The aim of the project is to perform solar and lunar absorption measurements of atmospheric trace gases for the valdation of the SCIAMACHY satellite. Besides the routine observations within the NDSC it is planned to perform more intense measurements, especially during the satellite overpasses.
Situated in the Arctic Ocean the planetary boundary layer over Ny Ålesund is dominated by marine aerosols. Hight and time variation of boundary layer aerosols are examined with the tropospheric lidar system in Ny Ålesund. To determine the aerosol and its optical properties more exactly information from more wavelenghts are necessary as the sun-photometer at the Koldewey Station can provide. First combined evaluation of photometer and LIDAR data during the ASTAR-campaign in spring 2000 demonstrated feasibility and advantages of this method for the free troposphere. Furthermore this method is to be applied on boundary layer aerosol to research also its optical properties.