Is the Arctic sea-ice going to disappear in the future?
Damocles: a European integrated project

Dec. 15, 2006

During recent years, observations indicated record lows in Sea-Ice extent and decreasing thickness. Is the Arctic perennial sea-ice going to disappear in a foreseeable future such as predicted by all state-of-art climate models in few decades or even faster?
This extreme climate event of global importance, would have enormous consequences on our environment and drastic socio-economic impacts affecting human beings, human health and human activities, in particular for inhabitants leaving in Europe, North America, Russia and Siberia. 

We proposed DAMOCLES, a European Integrated Project for Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies in order (1) to identify the on-going changes concerning Sea-Ice, Atmosphere and Ocean in the Arctic, (2) to evaluate our capability to simulate these changes in numerical models, (3) to improve our level of confidence for predicting extreme events affecting the Arctic Environment, (4) to evaluate the socio-economic impacts of a drastic retreat of the Arctic perennial Sea-Ice or even its disappearance in a near future. 

The European Integrated Project DAMOCLES is a response to the 3rd call of the 6th Framework program of the European Commission in the sub-priority "Global Change and Ecosystems" and is a major contribution from the European Union to the International Polar Year (2007-2008).

Since December 1st 2005, 44 Institutions including 7 SMEs distributed among 10 European countries representing more than 100 Arctic Ocean scientific experts, are engaged under the words of DAMOCLES for space and in situ observations, modelling and forecasting of the long-term changes of the Atmosphere, Sea-Ice and Ocean of the Arctic Environment at a time the Arctic Ocean is undergoing drastic changes. 

Damocles is a 4 years program (2005-2009). It consists of developing and operating a long-term observing and forecasting Arctic Ocean Observing system in order to evaluate and predict risks and impacts of extreme climate events such as the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer or equivalently the disappearance of the Arctic perennial ice. This is a very challenging program involving innovative High Tech Instrumentation dealing with automatic platforms capturing all time information in the atmosphere, sea-ice and ocean in a harsh environment, collecting a unique data set based on a huge effort in field work activities involving drifting stations (Tara and NP35), European and Russian icebreakers (Polarstern, Akademik Fedorov, Kapitan Dranitsyn, Oden) and operating advanced data assimilation scheme for State-of-the-Art climate and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models.

The DAMOCLES European Integrated Project is an extraordinary opportunity which will allow us to increase our skill for observing and predicting climate change of the Earth's environment and in particular of the polar regions which are more sensitive to the global warming effect than any other regions on the Globe. It is an ambitious challenge the scientific experts of the Arctic Ocean are going to address (1) by developing technological capabilities in order to collect a lot of critical and missing information, (2) by improving systems which allow the assimilation of large data sets in sophisticated numerical models, (3) by informing the public, policy makers, young generation of students and scholars about multiple issues related to the scientific research for better knowledge of the Earth's environment

DAMOCLES corresponds to a major integration of the scientific potential in Europe devoted to research of the polar environment and represents a powerful structure for developing international cooperation with North America (USA and Canada), Russia and Asia (Japan, China and Korea). Since October 1st 2005, the European Union is supporting a Specific Support Action "Search for Damocles" bringing US scientists of the Search US program together with Damocles EU scientists. Search, standing for "Study of Environmental ARctic Change" is the equivalent USA counterpart of the European Damocles integrated project. The SSA Search for Damocles is a joint EU-US initiative for the development of Arctic Ocean Long-term observing and forecasting systems, infrastructure and data management in order to explore opportunities and potential benefits to co-ordinate two large research programmes, i.e. SEARCH in the US and DAMOCLES in the EU and to organise common workshops and international conferences. Quite recently the European Integrated Project Damocles supported more and new contributions from 3 new Russian partners and one from Belarus raising the Russian partnership in Damocles up to 5 full Russian partners.

DAMOCLES will help maintaining the European flag high above the international scene for protecting our Environment and the legacy to future generations in particular in the perspective of the International Polar Year (IPY). The IPY will start officially on March 1st 2007 and will last for 2 years. This period is perfectly in phase with Damocles to fully develop a complex and ambitious experimental program involving icebreakers from Germany, Sweden and Russia, very innovative high technology such as submarine floats equipped with upward looking sonar (ULS), drifting at constant depth (-50m) under sea-ice to measure sea-ice thickness, Ice Tethered Platforms (ITP) equipped with profilers sampling temperature and salinity as a function of pressure or depth from -10m down to -1000m, sea-gliders navigating under sea-ice in conjunction with Acoustic Ice Tethered Platforms.

Following the Damocles kick-off meeting in Paris on December 19 and 20, 2005, the Damocles second General Assembly in Bremen on December 4 and 5, 2006 will be an important event just few months before the official start of the IPY on March 2007. 2007 is going to be a critical year for Damocles. 2006 was a preparatory phase for Damocles with lots of workshops in order to set up the agenda for 2007-2008 including numbers of field works activities. Following the Damocles General Assembly in Bremen, there will be several workshops and training schools for the remaining part of the week for developing synergy between models and observations (December 6), data assimilation in numerical models (December 6 and 7) and modelling activity per se(December 8). Marine activities will also be reviewed (December 7 and 8) due to the high level of activity scheduled for Damocles field works in 2007 and 2008 and involving European and Russian Icebreakers for the whole summer period. 

The main goals and objectives of Damocles, the consortium with participants from all over Europe contributing to the project and the international cooperation aspect with SEARCH for instance. The integration factor will also be stressed as a strength and key issue for the success of Damocles. Also the connection with IPY will be highlighted. This part will also summarized all the Damocles activities occurring during the week in Bremen.