Arctic: Scientists take ‘blue-action’ to help society cope with climate changes

20 December 2016, by Stephanie Janssen

Photo: UHH/CEN/Stefan Kern

To thrive in the rapidly changing Arctic environment people have to adapt swiftly.

Blue-Action is a four-year research and innovations project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme with €7.5 million

Blue-Action is a four-year research and innovations project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme with €7.5 million investment. It brings together 116 experts from 40 organisations in 17 countries on three continents working in academia, local authorities and maritime industries, with participation of CEN scientist.

While the Arctic faces rapid warming and less sea ice currently covers the Arctic Ocean than ever before at this time of the year, an international partnership launches a major project to improve our detailed understanding of the processes and impacts of this changing climate and to construct better long-term forecast systems for the increasingly extreme weather of the Arctic and the wider northern hemisphere.

Pooling the expertise, skills, approaches and networks, the partners aim to improve how we describe, model and predict the weather and climate on seasonal to decadal time scales in the Arctic and over the northern hemisphere. This information will allow communities and businesses in Eurasia and North America to develop and plan their activities better. Johanna Baehr from CEN for example is woking on improving seasonal long range forecast skill of risks for hazardous weather and climate events.

“We will deliver this by synthesizing observations, assessing model performance, conducting coordinated multi-model sensitivity experiments, reducing and evaluating the uncertainty in prediction systems and developing new initialization techniques” explains Dr Daniela Matei from the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, one of two coordinators of the project.

“Working directly with local communities, businesses operating in the Arctic and industrial organisations, Blue-Action will demonstrate new opportunities for growth through tailored climate services. These will give users the information they need to live and work safely and successfully in the rapidly changing regions in and surrounding the Arctic” says project coordinator Dr Steffen M Olsen from the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen. The project begins its work on 1^st December 2016.

More information
Blue-Action: Arctic Impact on Wheater and Climate