One of the greatest threats to human beings is climate change. Predictions indicate that our environmental conditions will change with increasing speed in the coming years with one of the most significant changes being a warming of the global climate. However, although there will be warming on the global scale there will be large regional variations in climate that will affect various parts of the world differently. In fact, Europe is maybe the most sensitive region of the world and it is not known whether we will experience regional cooling or warming in a future warmer world (in general press). However, most likely, global warming will change the living conditions in Europe significantly. The weather will show more extreme conditions, like flooding and hurricanes, and the population distribution will change. . The best natural indicator of global warming is the cryosphere, i.e. masses of sea-ice, snow, and glaciers. The Euro-Arctic ice cover and high-mountain seasonal snow cover should be monitored in order to continuously assess the climatic health of Europe. Observations already indicate that the Arctic may be free of sea ice in summer within 50-100 years. Therefore, it is of great importance to monitor the cryosphere in order to make updated predictions and be able to take the necessary measures in time to limit the consequences to European citizens. One example of a measure that is needed when the climate changes is national building codes that prescribe characteristic loads (e.g., snow and wind). In summary, Europe itself should be concerned with the fate of the Euro-Arctic cryosphere, for in this respect, the Arctic/sub-Arctic tail may wag the mid-latitude dog.

Main objective

Develop and validate an advanced system for climate monitoring and prediction for the support of a sustainable development and protection of the environment in Europe. The system will focus on global warming and the consequences thereof. The European cryosphere (the Euro-Arctic region and high-mountain areas with seasonal snow, including Greenland) will be the focus of the main indicator system. Snow and ice variables are extracted and processed by advanced sensor technology and algorithms and applied in regional climate models and statistical models in order to predict changes and run scenario analyses. Project partners with national operational responsibilities have committed themselves with assistance from the industrial partners in the consortium to make EuroClim an operational long-term monitoring system if the prototype system is a technical and cost-effective success.

Sub-objectives

The main goal is achieved through seven sub-objectives

• Determination of climate-change user needs
• Development of architecture and technology for generic, scalable and distributed processing and storage of geographical data
• Development of methodology for precise retrieval of cryospheric variables, based on integrated analysis and storage of multi-sensor, multi-resolution and multi-temporal data
• Improvement of the accuracy of algorithms for retrieval of cryospheric variables from earth-observation data
• Improvement of climate models in order to predict future climate accurately
• Development of new statistical tools for trend estimation scenario analysis and uncertainty assessment
• Initiation of an operational service

Current Status

SAMS maintains the Sea Ice Node of the EuroClim system.  The project continues, unfunded, through a Memorandum of Understanding between the consortium partners.