Documents

Antarctic Clouds and Aerosol Action Group – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Physical Sciences Group

Report Author: Tom Lachlan-Cope (UK)

Summary:
A meeting of the action group was held during the 2019 EGU meeting. This was associated with a polar cloud session at EGU. We have had our group meeting at EGU for several years as it has proved to be a good opportunity to get the Antarctic cloud community together – this year including a representative from the Australians. Useful discussions were had on future field plans and how these plans can be better coordinated. A major aim of this group is to develop a database of Antarctic cloud observation starting with ceilometer data. After a slow start this project is now getting off the ground and summer student has been employed at BAS to start preliminary work on this.

ANGWIN (ANtarctic Gravity Wave Instrument Network) Action Group – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Physical Sciences Group

Report Author: Tracy Moffat-Griffin (UK)

Summary of research:
The importance of gravity wave activity over Antarctica and its contribution to global circulation is well known, although there is a lack of comprehensive observations in this region. Gravity wave activity over Antarctica needs to be studied in a joined up fashion, continent wide and through all levels of the atmosphere in order to fully understand their impact and to constrain modelling work. By combining our resources through broad collaboration, and standardizing our analysis techniques we can achieve this.

AntArchitecture Action Group – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Physical Sciences and Geosciences Groups

Report Author: Robert Bingham (UK)

Overview:
AntArchitecture aims to develop a continent-wide age-depth model of Antarctica’s ice using the internal layers and surfaces imaged by radarsounding. The product will underpin the wider goal to determine the stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheets over past glacial cycles, and feeds into additional SCAR Groups such as PAIS, IPICS, and AntClim21.

AntArchitecture was approved as a SCAR Action Group at the June 2018 SCAR Delegates Meeting in Davos. As an Action Group, AntArchitecture has two 2-year milestones; the first being production of a white paper for 2020, outlining the need for an Antarctic radar-layers database, the potential applications, and methods for achieving it; the second being the aspiration to publish, in 2022, an online dataset and paper reporting the 3D internal architecture of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Antarctic Near-Shore and Terrestrial Observation System (ANTOS) Expert Group – 2018-19 Report

Expert Group of the Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Geosciences Groups

Report Author: Craig Cary (New Zealand)

Summary:

1. ANTOS representation at SCAR Integrated Science for the Sub Antarctic (ISSA) Workshop, 10-13 October 2018.
2. Matched funding to develop an ANTOS terrestrial survey protocol.
3. 2-3 workshops planned for later in 2019.
4. Italian National Programme will support installation of four new ANTOS Tier 1 systems in four locations near to Terra Nova Bay.
5. Agreement to develop a prototype telemeted (iridium) system much needed for the near-shore component of ANTOS.

Antarctic Volcanism (AntVolc) Expert Group – 2018-19 Report

Expert Group of the Geosciences Group

Report Author: Adelina Geyer (Spain)

Summary of activities:

• Group membership of approx. 110 members, representing 16 countries.
• Adelina Geyer took over from John Smellie as Chair at the end of 2018.
• The AntVolc website (https://antvolcscar.wordpress.com/) is under continuous update and AntVolc Twitter (@antvolc) and Facebook accounts have been created.
• AntVolc “White Paper” Workshop being planned for the end of 2019 or into 2020.
• Organisation of four scientific sessions at major international conferences – SCAR & IASC POLAR 2018 (Davos, Switzerland – June 2018); EGU 2019 (Vienna, Austria – April 2019); IUGG 2019 (Montreal, Canada – July 2019);  XIII ISAES 2019 (Incheon, Korea – July 2019).
• The major AntVolc deliverable is a landmark review volume titled ‘Volcanism in Antarctica: 200 million years of subduction, rifting & continental break-up’ and writing is well underway.

ASPeCt (Antarctic Sea-Ice Processes and Climate) Expert Group – 2018-19 Report

Expert Group of the Physical Sciences Group

Report Author: Marilyn Raphael (USA)

Summary of activities since 2018:

• Contributing underway sea ice observations to the YOPP effort through south-bound cruises;
• processing existing ASPeCt data into a form that is easier to analyze;
• Twitter account set up;
• ASPeCt Side-meeting at the IGS in Winnepeg, August 2019.

Action Group on Geological Heritage and Geoconservation – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Geociences Group

Report Author: Kevin Hughes (UK)

Summary:

The Action Group outputs have been the base for the following SC-ATS policy outputs to CEP:

• ATCM XXXIX IP31. (2016). Antarctic Geoconservation: a review of current systems and practices
• ATCM XLII IP50. (2019). Draft SCAR Code of Conduct on Geosciences Field Research Activities in Antarctica

The group is also developing a methodology for identifying and classifying features of potential geological heritage value within the Treaty area.

GeoMAP (Geological Mapping Update of Antarctica) Action Group – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Geociences Group

Report Author: Simon Cox (New Zealand)

Summary:
GeoMAP action group is finalising the first version (v.201907) of a geological dataset to classify and describe the bedrock and surficial geology of Antarctica. Significant progress was achieved over the austral summer thanks
to seed-funding of travel/accommodation scholarships for students from SCAR. GeoMAP depicts ‘known geology’ of rock exposures rather than ‘interpreted’ sub-ice features, and is aimed towards continent-wide perspectives and cross-discipline interrogation. We plan to hold a release workshop at the Antarctica Earth Sciences symposia (XIII ISAES ) in Korea (July 2019). A ‘beta-version’ dataset will be provided to any interested people at, and after, the ISAES XIII meeting. It will then go through a review phase and be corrected for publication and formal release in 2020.

GRAPE (GNSS Research and Application for Polar Environment) Expert Group – 2018-19 Report

Expert Group of the Physical Sciences and Geociences Groups

Report Author: Giorgiana De Franceschi (Italy)

Summary:
GRAPE was born in 2012 and it is a joint Physical Science and Geoscience (expert) group. The group is working to enlarge the scientific and technological issues within Solar Terrestrial interactions and Space Weather mainly based on Radio Science. This action will be presented to the next SCAR2020 in order to discuss a possible new SRP (RESOURCE) or a new expert group embedding GRAPE that will finish its action in 2020.

Input Pathways of persistent organic pollutants to AntarCTica (ImPACT) – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Life Sciences and Physical Sciences Groups

Report Authors: Susan Bengtson Nash (Australia) and Pernilla Bohlin-Nizzett (Norway)

Summary:
The ImPACT action group has expanded to include 25 active members from 14 nations. 4th quarter (2018) and 2nd quarter (2019) meetings have been held. Two ‘living’ databases have been generated detailing the current projects and activities of group members, as well as member sample archives, to facilitate cross group collaboration and streamlining of methods.

International Partnership in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) – 2018-19 Report

Expert Group of the Physical Sciences Group

Report Author: Tas van Ommen (Australia)

Summary:

• Planning for Third IPICS Open Science Conference, scheduled to take place at Crans-Montana, Switzerland on October 18-23, 2020.
• Agreement from EGU for a special issue in the form of collected papers on the theme “Oldest Ice: finding and interpreting climate proxies in ice older than 700 000 years”.
• Significant developments in the community centre around the Oldest Ice Project itself, with announcement of EU funding of the Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice (BE-OI) consortium.

ISMASS (Ice Sheet Mass Balance and Sea Level) – 2018-19 Report

Expert Group of the Physical Sciences Group

Report Author: Catherine Ritz (France)

Summary:

ISMASS is dedicated to both Arctic and Antarctic and is supported by SCAR, CliC, and IASC. The following information does not directly concern Antarctica but Greenland. The tools however are common for both ice sheets. ISMASS promoted an intercomparison project (SMBMIP, also in the framework of ISMIP6) which aimed to evaluate all estimations of SMB, coming from RCM, PDD and GCM over the Greenland ice sheet in the goal of forcing ice sheet models afterwards. The first results were presented at AGU in fall 2018.

ISMASS will continue to be involved in intercomparison projects such as ISMIP6 (climate and ice sheets), MISOMIP (ocean and ice sheet). Several members of ISMASS are members of the PPG AIDSL (Antarctic Ice Dynamics and Sea Level Change).

SCAR Remote Sensing Action Group: “Development of a satellite-based, Antarctic-wide, remote sensing approach to monitor bird and animal populations” – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Life Sciences and Physical Sciences Groups

Report Authors: Hans-Ulrich Peter and Osama Mustafa (Germany)

Summary:

• Organizing an Action Group Meeting during the Polar2018 Conference in Davos.
• Publication of the outcomes of the workshop “Drones in Polar Biology” during SCAR Biology Symposium 2017 regarding the impact of drones on wildlife.
• Providing input for the Information Paper 10 of XLII ATCM (Prague 2019) “An update to the state of knowledge of wildlife responses to unmanned aerial vehicles” .
• Communication with the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2016 resulted in a regular coverage of Antarctic coastline by Sentinel-2 every 10 days from September 2018 to April 2019.
• Consultancy for National Scientific Antarctic Center of the Ukraine on the establishment of a drone-based monitoring programme of Penguin colonies and vegetation at Argentine Islands.

CLIVAR/CliC/SCAR Southern Ocean Region Panel – 2018-19 Report

Expert Group of the Physical Sciences Group

Report Author: Inga Smith (New Zealand)

Summary:

The CLIVAR/CliC/SCAR Southern Ocean Region Panel (SORP) organized three teleconferences among its panel members since the SCAR Delegates Meeting in 2018. The purpose of the teleconferences was to discuss science
updates, organize upcoming events and the overall organization of the Panel activities.

Major outcomes include: the appointment of four new Panel members (from Canada, South Africa, Japan and Brazil); the appointment of new National Representatives (from Turkey, India, Sweden, United Kingdom and France) from which SORP has received already ten National Reports to build an overview of observational, modeling, national projects and initiatives, ocean reanalysis and state estimation initiatives relevant to the SORP; the establishment of Task Teams within SORP for a better coordination of SORP scientific efforts; the participation of some of the Panel members in two OceanObs’19 White Papers.

Upcoming activities include: the organization of a joint NORP-SORP coordinated session at the forthcoming IGS Sea Ice Symposium in 2019; the organization of a SOOS-SORP joint side meeting to be held alongside the SCAR OSC in 2020; the organization of the next SORP Panel Meeting (SORP-14) alongside SCAR OSC 2020; the early stages planning and organization of a possible joint NORP-SORP AGCI (Aspen Global Change Institute) workshop in spring 2020.

Tropical Antarctic Teleconnections (TATE) Action Group – 2018-19 Report

Action Group of the Physical Sciences Group

Report Author: Sheeba Nettukandy Chenoli (Malaysia)

Summary:

A relaunch of the action group at Davos proposed the selection of a research-active AG chair. Therefore, a new chair was selected.

There are plans to sponsor a half-day workshop on TATE on 20 June 2019, in conjunction with 8th Malaysian International Seminar on Antarctica, and publish a report on the workshop in Advances in Polar Sciences.

The TATE group will also be contributing sessions to XIII ISAES 2019 (Korea, July 2019) and 2020 SCAR OSC (Hobart, August 2020).