7 December 2016:
SCAR’s highly successful AnT-ERA (Antarctic Thresholds – Ecosystem Resilience and Adaptation) Scientific Research Programme has highlighted recent group activities and some important research in five new popular articles published on their website.
At the recent SCAR Delegates Meeting, AnT-ERA secured approval and funding for another four-year period. The group’s Chief Officer, Julian Gutt is delighted that their important work can continue, including contributing to the Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment (ACCE) Report updates, providing input to SCAR’s reports to the Antarctic Treaty System, involvement in SCAR conferences and symposia, supporting engagement at IPCC events and, more recently, engagement with IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). In November 2016, Irene Schloss, a member of AnT-ERA’s Steering Committee, represented the SCAR community at the UNFCCC COP22 meeting in Marrakech. She provided an Antarctic perspective at a side event on “Urgencies in Fundamental Climate Research following the Paris Agreement“. Follow the links for more information on AnT-ERA’s continuation and the COP22 side-event.
A special issue of the journal Biodiversity was recently published as a main product of AnT-ERA, covering aspects of variation and function at all levels of biological organisation. Other publications highlighted by the group include an up-to-date synthesis of the current knowledge about Antarctic krill and an important paper showing how icebergs destroy an enormous amount of biomass in polar shallow waters, releasing carbon that would otherwise be sequestered in the sediment. Follow the links in the text for more details about these publications, or see the highlights on the AnT-ERA website.