31 October 2016:
The Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR), a close partner of SCAR’s, has recently published a newsletter containing updates from their annual steering committee meeting. There are a number of items of interest to the Antarctic community in this addition and we encourage you to take a look.
Of particular note is the approval of a new working group on “Measuring Essential Climate Variables in Sea Ice (ECV-Ice)“. The group is described as follows: Observations over recent decades suggest that sea ice plays a significant role in global biogeochemical cycles, providing an active biogeochemical interface at the ocean- atmosphere boundary. However, a pressing need exists to perform methodological intercalibration experiments in sea ice in order to obtain reliable measurements of basic biogeochemical properties, including many of the Essential Climate Variables of the Global Climate Observing System. With newly emerging techniques, and pressed by the rapid changes in sea ice, the time has come to evaluate and improve our approach to studying sea-ice systems. An international working group is required to synthesize past intercalibration exercises and to design and coordinate new experiments.
For more information on this group and other SCOR updates, please download their newsletter: http://www.scor-int.org/Publications/SCOR-NL-33.pdf